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SOCIAL  LIFE  IN 
OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 


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SOCIAL  LIFE  IN 
OLD    NEW    ENGLAND 


MARY   CAROLINE   CRAWFORD 


iD-wjM?1"' 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 

1915 


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SOCIAL  LIFE  IN 
OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 


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SOCIAL  LIFE  IN 
OLD    NEW    ENGLAND 


MARY  CAROLINE  CRAWFORD 

>  -Wj**^  "  ROMANTIC   DAIB 


BOSTON 
LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 

1915 


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Digitized  Dy  GOOgk 


Copyright,  1914, 

Bl   LlTTLK,    BKOWN,    ADD   Com 


All  right*  reurvd 


Publiihed,  October,  191* 


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FOREWORD 

Good  Americans  are  becoming  more  deeply 
interested,  with  each  year  that  passes,  in  the 
intimate  every-day  life  of  those  who  built  up 
this  country.  Though  we  are  less  and  less  con- 
cerned all  the  time  about  the  battles  fought  as  a 
means  to  the  establishment  of  our  United  States, 
we  care  increasingly  for  the  human  nature  of  the 
men  who  did  the  fighting  and  for  the  beauty  of 
character  and  countenance  which  distinguished 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  those  men.  After 
telling  each  other  for  a  couple  of  centuries  that 
the  American  home  is  the  foundation  of  the  Re- 
public, we  are  at  last  beginning  to  prove  that 
we  believe  it  by  showing  real  interest  in  that 
home  and  in  those  who  founded  it.  Thus  the 
education  that  qualified  for  the  home,  the  pro- 
fessions, and  industries  that  maintained  it, 
the  religion  that  nourished  it,  the  love  that 
was  its  backbone,  the  hospitality  exercised  in 
it,  the  books  that  provided  subjects  for  its  con- 
versation, the  journeys  that  heightened  its 
allurements,  the  amusements  that  brightened 
its  days  of  hard  work  —  all  these  aspects  of 
home  and  home-life  are  being  recognized  as  of 


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vi  FOREWORD 

vital  importance,  if  we  would  truly  understand 
the  ideals  behind  American  civilization. 

But  as  our  desire  grows  to  know  more  and 
more  about  early  manners  and  customs  in  this 
country,  means  of  acquiring  that  knowledge 
are  constantly  diminishing.  Only  in  very 
large  and  wealthy  libraries  can  now  be  found 
files  of  Colonial  newspapers  —  than  which  no 
source  of  information  is  more  valuable.  And 
only  here  and  there,  in  the  crowded  life  of  our 
time,  is  to  be  met  the  man  or  the  woman  having 
the  temperament,  the  sympathy,  and  the  pa- 
tience necessary  to  research  which  will  ex- 
tract material  of  real  value  from  these  and 
other  sources.  Three  such,  Mrs.  Harriette  M- 
Forbes  of  Worcester,  Mrs.  Charles  Knowles 
Bolton  of  Brookline,  and  Mrs.  James  de  Forest 
Shelton  of  Derby,  Connecticut,  have  been  most 
kind  in  placing  at  my  disposal  the  results  of 
much  devout  digging  in  their  several  fields  of 
scholarship,  and  to  them,  as  to  Mr.  Clifton 
Johnson,  who  procured  for  me  several  rare 
illustrations  of  old-time  school-books,  I  am 
very  glad  here  to  acknowledge  my  deep  in- 
debtedness. 

To  the  inspiration  of  Alice  Morse  Earle's 
books  on  Old  New  England;  to  the  invaluable 
files  of  the  New  England  Magazine;  to  the 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company;  to  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons;    Charles  Scribner's  Sons;  the  W. 


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FOREWORD  vii 

B.  Clarke  Company  of  Boston;  and  to  the 
editors  of  McClure's  Magazine,  I  likewise  give 
my  thanks  for  quotation  privileges  more  specif- 
ically acknowledged  in  the  text  of  the  book. 
Librarians  not  a  few  have  greatly  helped  me, 
also,  notably  those  in  charge  of  the  several 
New  England  colleges,  at  the  American  Anti- 
quarian Society  in  Worcester,  at  the  Boston 
Athenaeum,  and  at  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
If  I  have  succeeded  in  making  the  social  life  of 
old  New  England  a  real  thing  to  my  readers,  it 
is  because  of  the  generous  cooperation  which 
has  thus  been  extended  to  me.  One  of  the  very 
nicest  things  about  writing  a  book  like  this  is 
the  deepened  belief  which  is  gained  in  the  in- 
nate kindliness  and  helpfulness  of  people  every- 
where. If  we  of  to-day  are  no  longer  neighbors 
in  the  old  New  England  sense  of  the  word,  we 
are  more  than  ever  neighbors  in  the  true  sense; 
and  no  one  knows  this  better  than  the  author, 
who  must  constantly  send  letters  to  strangers 
and  ask  favors  of  everybody.  It  is  my  sincere 
hope  that  the  scores  of  people  upon  whose  time 
I  have  thus  trespassed  will  feel  that  it  has  all 
been  worth  while,  in  that  we  have  together 
been  able  to  humanize  for  future  generations 
New  Englanders  of  a  vanished  day. 

m.  c.  c. 
Boston,  July,  1914. 


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CONTENTS 

Foreword v 

I.    In  the  Little  Red  Schoolhoose    .  1 

II.    Going  to  College 46 

III.  Choosing  a  Profession  .112 

IV.  "  Tending  Meetin'  " 146 

V.    Getting  Married 196 

VI.    Setting  Up  Housekeeping         .       .        .  233 

VII.    Keeping  a  Diary 888 

VIII.     Having  a  Picture  Taken  ....  319 

IX.    Reading  Books 350 

X.    The  Occasional  Journey   .                       .  S78 
XI.    Singing  Schools  and  Kindred  Country 

Diversions 417 

XII.    Amusements  of  the  Big  Town  435 

XIII.  Funerals  as  Festivals       ....  463 

XIV.  St.  Pumpkin's  Day  and  Other  Honored 

Holidays 478 

XV.     Christmas  Under  thb  Ban  494 

Index 507 


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LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Hoke  tbom  the  Visit Fnmtupiax 

The  Little  Red  Schoolhouse,  Sandgatb,  Bennington 

Co.,  Vt 14 

Picture  Alphabet  of  Religious  Jingles        ...  15 

A  Schoolmaster  or  Long  Ago 22 

The  Rogers  Page 23 

A  Typical  Horn  -  Book 23 

Earliest    Representation     of     Harvard    College 

Buildings  Extant 60 

South  Middle  Hall,  the  Oldest  Yale  Building  Still 

Standing.    Built  in  1752 61 

Old  Baptist  Meeting  House,  Providence,  R.  I.        .88 
Dartmouth  Toweb  and  Old  Pine  Stump      ...  89 
Samson  Occom,  the  Indian  Who  Helped  in  the  Found- 
ing op  Dartmouth  College 89 

West  College  (Williams  College),  1790     ...  102 

President's  House,  Williams  College  ....  102 

Governor  Bowdoin 103 

The  Chapel,  Misdlebubt  College,  MmDLBBURY,  Vt.  103 

Dr.  James  Lloyd 132 

James  Otis 133 

An  Old  Bookbinder's  Advertisement     ....  140 

Robert  Bailbt  Thomas 140 

The  Last  of  the  Farm  Boys  and  His  Pair  or  Oxen  141 

The  Old  Ship,  Hinoham,  Mass.    Built  in  1081  146 
Announcement  or  the  Installation  or  a  New  Obgan 

at  King's  Church,  Providence,  in  1771  147 

A  Page  or  the  Old  Bay  Psalm  Book    ....  156 
The  Obgan  Upon  Which  Oliver  Holden  Harmonized 

"  Coronation  " 157 


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rii         LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  . 

St.  Paul's  Church,  Wicxfqrd,  R.  1 163 

Meeting  House  at  Rocky  Hill,  Amebbuby,  Mah., 

Showing  Box  Pewb 163 

Hester  Prynnk  of  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  186 

A  Fine  Old  Mebttino  House,  Bennington,  Vt.     .  187 

Synagogue  Yeshuat  Israel,  Newport,  R.  I.  190 
Interior  op  Trinity  Church,  Newport,  R.  I.    Built 

in  1725 191 

The  John  Aldbn  House,  Duxburt,  Mass.    Built  1663  204 
Thb   Reverend    Arthur    Browne,    or   Portsmouth, 

N.  H 205 

Governor  John  Endicott 216 

Governor  John  Winthrop 216 

A  Wedding  Party  in  Boston  in  1756     ....  217 

Ancient  House  at  Plymouth 234 

The  Old  Gambrel  -  Roofed  House,  Cambridge,  Mass. 

Birthplace  op  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  235 
Stone  Mansion  at  Newbuhtport,  Mass.     Built  in 

1636 238 

A  Brave  Display  of  Pewter 239 

A  Fireplace  with  a  Real  Chihnet  Cobnib  258 

Some  Retired  Spinning  Wheels 259 

Dressed  to  go  Calling 276 

A  New  England  Village,  Showing  Elm  St.,  Framing- 
ham,  Mass 277 

Kitchen  of  the  Dorothy  Q.  House,  Quinct,  Mabs.     .  286 
Compass  and  Sun  -  Dial  Owned  by  Roger  Williams 
and  Presumably  Used  by  Him  in  Hib  Journey 

into  Exile  in  1635 287 

A  Fine  Example  op  a  Highhct 287 

State  Street,  Boston,  One  Hundred  Years  Ago  306 

Boston's  Old  South  Meeting  House,  about  1800  307 

Cotton  Mather 320 

Samuel  Sbwall 321 

The   Copley  Family,   Showing   the  Artist  in  the 

Background 326 

General  Hbnby  Knox 327 

Mrs.  John  Trumbull 332 


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LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xiii 

Mm.  R,  C.  DbbBT 333 

A  Rare  Wax  Portrait  or  Olives  Holden,  Composer 

or  "  Coronation  " 338 

Rev.  John  Pibbpont,  His  Win  and  Daughter   .       .  339 

Mas.  Mkbct  Warbhn 356 

iron  Adams 356 

Washington  Irving 357 

A  View  or  Pbovtdbncb,  R.  L,  about  1824    ...  384 

Williams  Tavern  in  Marlborough,  Mass.    .  384 
Interior  or   the   Whipple  House,   Ipswich,   Mass., 

FORMERLY  A  TavERN 385 

"  The  Earl  or  Halifax  "  Inn,  Portsmouth,   N.  H., 

Kept  by  John  Stavbbs  in  1761  .392 

Tap  Room,  WATsma  Inn,  Sudbury,  Mass.     .              .  393 

The  Wayside  Inn 428 

A  Flock  or  Merino  Sheep  in  a  New  England  Pasture  429 
Plaxinq  -  Card    Invitation    prom    John    Brown    op 
Providence  fob  a  Dance  at  His  New  House, 

1788 438 

A  Sonata  or  Clbmenti 439 

Pumpkin  Time 472 

Thanksgiving  Preparations 473 

Kino's  Chapel,  Boston,  Hung  with  Christmas  Gbebns 
and  Showing  the  Coats  of  Asms  of  the  Various 

Rotal  Governors  .......  604 

Intbbiob  of  the  Old  M  beting  House  at  Bennington, 

Vt. 505 


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SOCIAL  LIFE  IN  OLD 
NEW  ENGLAND 

CHAPTER  I 

IN  THE  LITTLE  RED   SCHOOLHOUSE 

NO  tradition  is  cherished  more  lovingly  by 
the  mass  of  the  American  people  than 
that  of  the  "  little  red  schoolhouse." 
From  this  humble  institution,  we  have  always 
felt,  went  forth  influences  which  have  been  of 
inestimable  value  in  building  up  a  sturdy,  self- 
respecting  manhood  and  womanhood  in  this 
country.  We  have  liked  to  read  stories  in  the 
opening  chapters  of  which  John  Smith,  an 
awkward  lad  of  twelve,  is  shown  stealing  ad- 
miring glances  over  the  top  of  his  geography 
at  Sally  Jones,  a  pink-cheeked,  flaxen-haired 
maiden  of  ten,  in  whose  behalf  he  often  rises 
to  quite  heroic  proportions  —  outside  of  school 
hours.  Nor  were  they  mere  legends  —  all 
those   tales   about   the   purifying   effect   upon 


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2  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

John  of  his  adoration  of  Sally.  There  was  a 
basis  of  real  fact  in  the  contention  that  it  was 
good  for  him  and  not  bad  for  her  to  carry  her 
books  to  and  from  school  and  gladly  to  offer 
her  at  recess  the  red-cheeked  apple  which  a 
fond  mother  had  designed  for  her  "  own  boy's  " 
luncheon. 

Sometimes  John  and  Sally  married  after  their 
school  days  were  over;  sometimes  their  little 
romance  died  a  natural  death,  when  the  stern 
realities  of  life  came  to  claim  their  attention. 
But  it  is  of  them  and  their  playmates,  none  the 
less,  that  we  think  with  reminiscent  tenderness 
when,  during  a  drive  or  motor  trip  through  the 
winding  roads  of  old  New  England,  we  come 
suddenly,  at  a  cross-roads  corner,  upon  a  sur- 
viving district  schoolhouse.  The  building  is 
probably  white  now,  as  a  result  of  the  "  clean 
up  and  paint  up "  spirit  which,  through  our 
village  improvement  societies,  lias  penetrated 
to  even  the  remotest  settlements.  But  in  our 
mind's  eye  it  easily  takes  on  the  ruddy  glow  of 
former  days;  and  soon  we  see,  behind  the 
figures  of  John  Smith  and  Sally  Jones,  John's 
grandmother  and  Sally's  grandfather,  quaint 
little  people  who  here  pored  over  the  curious 
pages  of  the  "  New  England  Primer",  shivered 
in  winter  before  the  reluctant  fire  made  of 
green  pine  boughs,  or  in  summer  stitched  the 
samplers  of  Colonial  days  and  toiled  painfully 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  3 

with  the  primitive  horn-book.  Our  historical 
sequence  gets  a  little  mixed  in  the  flood  of 
emotion  awakened  by  the  sight  of  the  deserted 
schoolhouse.  But  we  know  that  we  are  glad  to 
have  seen  it  and  glad,  too,  to  belong  to  people 
who,  at  the  very  outset  of  their  career  in  the 
New  World,  provided  as  best  they  could  "  for 
the  perpetuation  of  learning  among  us." 

As  might  have  been  expected,  Boston  was 
the  first  town  in  New  England  to  take  public 
action  in  regard  to  setting  up  a  school.  In  1635 
it  was  agreed  in  town  meeting  that  "  Our 
brother  Philemon  Parmont  shall  be  entreated 
to  become  a  scoolemaster  for  the  teaching  and 
nourtering  of  children  with  us."  It  was  pro- 
vided that  Master  Parmont  should  receive  as 
recompense  for  such  "  nourtering  "  thirty  acres 
of  land  as  well  as  donations.  Soon  a  "  garden 
plot "  was  voted  to  Mr.  Daniel  Maude  as 
schoolmaster;  and  in  the  records  of  1636  may 
be  found  a  list  of  the  subscriptions  of  all  the 
principal  inhabitants  of  the  town  who  gave 
from  four  shillings  up  to  ten  pounds  each 
towards  Mr.  Maude's  maintenance. 

Massachusetts  established  schools  by  law  in 
1642,  ordering  each  town  of  fifty  householders 
to  "  appoint  one  within  their  town  to  teach  all 
such  children  as  shall  resort  to  him  to  read  and 
write."  The  selectmen  of  every  town  were 
required  to  have  a  "  vigilant  eye  over    their 


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4  SOCIAL    LIFE    IX 

brethren  and  neighbors,  and  see  that  none  of 
them  shall  suffer  so  much  barbarism  in  any  of 
their  families,  as  not  to  endeavour  to  teach 
their  children  and  apprentices  so  much  learning 
as  may  enable  them  perfectly  to  read  the 
English  tongue  and  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the 
laws."  It  was  even  provided  that,  if  parents 
were  neglectful  of  their  duties  in  the  matter  of 
education,  their  children  might  be  taken  from 
them  and  given  to  the  care  of  others  not  so 
"  unnatural!  " 

The  law  of  1642  enjoined  universal  education 
but  did  not  make  it  free;  nor  did  it  impose 
any  penalty  upon  municipal  corporations  for 
neglecting  to  maintain  a  school.  But  the 
people  responded  so  generally  to  the  spirit  of 
the  law  that  Governor  Winthrop  was  able  to 
write: 

"  Divers  free  schools  were  erected  as  in  Rox- 
bury  (for  maintenance  whereof  every  inhabitant 
bound  some  house  or  land  for  a  yearly  allow- 
ance forever),  and  at  Boston  where  they  made 
an  order  to  allow  fifty  pounds  and  a  house,  to 
the  master,  and  thirty  pounds  to  an  usher 
who  should,  also,  teach  to  read  and  write  and 
cipher;  and  Indians'  children  were  to  be  taught 
freely,  and  the  charge  to  be  by  yearly  contribu- 
tion, either  by  voluntary  allowance,  or  by  rate 
of  such  as  refused,  etc.;  and  this  order  was 
confirmed  by  the  General  Court.    Other  towns 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  5 

did  the  like,  providing  maintenance  by  several 
means." 

R.  C.  Waterston  has  interestingly  established 
an  intimate  relationship  between  this  first  free 
school  in  Boston  and  Reverend  John  Cotton. 
In  the  Boston  of  Lincolnshire,  England,  from 
which  Cotton  had  emigrated  to  New  England, 
a  free  grammar  school  had  been  established  by 
Queen  Mary  as  early  as  1554,  the  first  year  of 
her  reign.  In  this  school  Latin  and  Greek  were 
taught,  and  it  was  quite  natural,  therefore, 
that  a  lover  of  learning,  like  Cotton,  should 
have  immediately  concerned  himself,  upon  set- 
tling in  the  New  World,  with  the  inception  here 
of  an  institution  similar  to  the  one  with  whose 
government  he  had  been  deeply  concerned  in 
old  Boston.  The  fact  that  the  master  of  the 
Lincolnshire  school  had  "  a  house  rent-free " 
is  held  to  be  reason  that,  besides  the  fifty 
pounds  allowed  to  the  Boston  teacher  In  1645, 
"  a  house  for  him  to  live  in  "  was  also  provided. 

In  some  of  the  towns  of  Massachusetts, 
schools,  of  course,  had  been  established  well  in 
advance  of  the  1642  law  which  made  them  a 
necessity.  Dorchester,  Ipswich,  and  Salem  had 
schools  early  in  the  history  of  the  colony.  New 
Haven  and  Hartford  founded  schools  in  1638 
and  1641  respectively,  while  Newport  had  a 
school  in  1640.  Woburn,  Massachusetts,  very 
early  in  its  history  had  an  interesting  "  dame 


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6  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

school "  kept  by  Mrs.  Walker,  a  widow  who 
lived  in  the  center  of  the  town  and  taught 
Woburn  youth  to  read  and  write  in  a  room  of 
her  own  home.  How  profitable  pedagogy  then 
was  as  a  profession  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact  that,  although  the  town  in  1641  agreed  to 
pay  this  woman  ten  shillings  annually  for  her 
services  as  teacher,  her  net  income,  at  the  end 
of  the  first  year,  was  only  one  shilling  and  three- 
pence by  reason  of  the  fact  that  seven  shillings 
had  already  been  deducted  for  her  taxes,  and 
various  other  amounts  for  "  produce  which  she 
had  received ! " 

The  Roxbury  Latin  School  was  a  very  early 
institution.  It  owed  its  establishment  chiefly 
to  the  Apostle  Eliot  and  dates  from  1645  — 
only  ten  years  later  than  the  time  when  Phile- 
mon Parmont  set  up  as  a  "  scoolemaster  "  in 
neighboring  Boston.  It  has  been  exceedingly 
prosperous  almost  from  the  beginning,  by 
reason  of  the  fact  that  Thomas  Bell,  who  died 
in  1671,  left  a  large  quantity  of  Roxbury  real 
estate  for  its  continued  maintenance  and  sup- 
port. It  is  a  close  rival  in  the  picturesqueness 
of  its  history  to  the  Boston  Latin  School. 

The  most  interesting  early  schoolmaster  of 
this  venerable  institution  was  Ezekiel  Cheever, 
who  was  born  in  London  in  1614  and  first  came 
to  the  Boston  of  New  England  when  he  was 
twenty-three  years  old.     Not  at  that  tender 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  7 

age  did  he  enter  upon  his  career  as  a  Boston 
Latin  School  teacher,  however.  He  was  suc- 
cessively at  New  Haven,  Ipswich,  and  Charles- 
town  before,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  he  received 
from  the  great  men  of  Boston  the  keys  of  its 
most  famous  school.  This  was  in  1670.  He 
died  in  1708,  at  the  ripe  age  of  ninety-four,  and 
was  thus  described  by  Judge  Sewall  in  his 
diary:  "He  labored  in  his  calling,  skilfully, 
diligently,  constantly,  religiously,  seventy  years, 
—  a  rare  instance  of  piety,  health,  strength, 
serviceableness.  The  welfare  of  the  Province 
was  much  upon  his  spirit.  He  abominated 
periwigs."  Cheever  was  buried  from  the  school- 
house  where  he  had  long  held  his  sway  and  made 
his  home.  His  "  Accidence  "  continued  to  hold 
the  place  of  honor  for  a  century  among  Latin 
school-books.  The  only  personal  portrait  we 
have  of  him  was  furnished  by  his  pupil,  the 
Reverend  Samuel  Maxwell,  who  once  wrote: 
"  He  wore  a  long  white  beard,  terminating  in  a 
point,  and  when  he  stroked  his  beard  to  the 
point  it  was  a  sign  for  the  boys  to  stand  clear." 
Phillips  Brooks,  however,  who  was  always  a 
loyal  Latin  School  boy  and  who  wrote  the  Me- 
morial Address  on  the  occasion  of  the  school's 
250th  anniversary  (in  1885),  insists  that  it  was 
"  the  eternal  terror  and  no  mere  earthly  rage  " 
which  burned  in  Master  Cheever's  eye  on  these 
occasions  when  his  hand  followed  his  beard  to 


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8  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

its  uttermost  point.  That  he  "  wrestled  'with 
the  Lord  "  often  and  long  over  the  souls  of  his 
pupils  is  well  known. 

We  are,  however,  proceeding  too  fast  and  too 
far.  The  days  of  Cheever's  preeminence  as  a 
teacher  were  two  generations  later  than  the 
inception  of  the  "  divers  free  schools  "  in  towns 
around  Boston  to  which  Winthrop  had  refer- 
ence. Dorchester  was  one  of  these  towns,  and 
the  directions  there  given,  in  1645,  to  the 
schoolmaster  by  the  town  fathers  are  delight- 
fully quaint.  It  was  provided  that  in  the 
wanner  months  the  school  day  should  be  from 
seven  in  the  morning  until  five  in  the  afternoon, 
while  during  the  colder  and  darker  months  the 
hours  were  from  eight  to  four.  There  was, 
however,  a  midday  intermission  from  eleven  to 
one,  except  on  Monday.    Then  we  read: 

"  The  master  shall  call  his  scholars  together 
between  twelve  and  one  of  the  clock  to  examine 
them  what  they  have  learned,  at  which  time 
also  he  shall  take  notice  of  any  misdemeanor 
or  outrage  that  any  of  his  scholars  shall  have 
committed  on  the  sabbath,  to  the  end  that  at 
some  convenient  time  due  admonition  and  cor- 
rection may  be  administered. 

"  He  shall  diligently  instruct  both  in  humane 
and  good  literature,  and  likewise  in  point  of 
good  manners  and  dutiful  behavior  towards  all, 
especially   their  superiors.      Every  day  of  the 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  9 

week  at  two  of  the  clock  in  the  afternoon,  he 
shall  catechise  his  scholars  in  the  principles  of 
the  Christian  religion. 

"  He  shall  faithfully  do  his  best  to  benefit  his 
scholars,  and  not  remain  away  from  school 
unless  necessary.  He  shall  equally  and  im- 
partially teach  such  as  are  placed  in  his  care, 
no  matter  whether  their  parents  be  poor  or 
rich. 

"  It  is  to  be  a  chief  part  of  the  schoolmaster's 
religious  care  to  commend  his  scholars  and  his 
labors  amongst  them  unto  God  by  prayer 
morning  and  evening,  taking  care  that  his 
scholars  do  reverently  attend  during  the  same. 

"  The  rod  of  correction  is  a  rule  of  God  neces- 
sary sometimes  to  be  used  upon  children.  The 
schoolmaster  shall  have  full  power  to  punish 
all  or  any  of  his  scholars,  no  matter  who  they 
are.  No  parent  or  other  person  living  in  the 
place  shall  go  about  to  hinder  the  master  in 
this.  But  if  any  parent  or  others  shall  think 
there  is  just  cause  for  complaint  against  the 
master  for  too  much  severity,  they  shall  have 
liberty  to  tell  him  so  in  friendly  and  loving 
way." 

To  Dedharn,  Massachusetts,  should  be 
ascribed  the  honor  of  having  established  the 
first  public  school  in  America  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  of  to-day  understand  the  term:  a 
school,  that  is,  established  by  the  voters  or 


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10 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


freemen  of  the  town  and  supported  by  general 
taxation.  The  settlement  of  Dedham  —  origi- 
nally called  Contentment  —  was  begun  in  1635, 
and  the  first  recorded  birth  in  the  town  was  on 
June  21  of  that  year.  Ere  this  first-born  of  the 
new  settlement  was  a  year  and  a  half  old,  a 
committee  had  been  appointed  (January  1, 
1637)  "  to  contrive  the  Fabricke  of  a  meeting- 
house; "  and  in  this  meeting-house  seven  years 
later  the  first  free  public  school  was  established 
by  the  following  vote: 

"  The  said  Inhabitants,  taking  into  Consider- 
ation the  great  necessitie  of  providing  some 
means  for  the  Education  of  the  youth  in  our 
s'd  Towne,  did  with  an  unanimous  consent  de- 
clare by  voate  their  willingness  to  promote  that 
worke,  promising  to  put  too  their  hands,  to 
provide  maintenance  for  a  Free  Schoole  in  our 
said  Towne. 

"  And  farther  did  resolve  and  consent,  tes- 
tifying it  by  voate,  to  rayse  the  summe  of 
Twenty  pounds  per  annu  towards  the  maintain- 
ing of  a  Schoole  Mr  to  keep  a  free  School  in  our 
s'd  towne. 

"  And  also  did  resolve  and  consent  to  betrust 
the  s'd  20  pound  pr  annu  &  certain  lands  in  our 
Towne  formerly  set  apart  for  publique  use,  into 
the  hand  of  Feoffees  to  be  presently  chosen  by 
themselves,  to  imploy  the  s'd  20  pounds  and 
the  land  afores'd  to  be  improved  for  the  use  of 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  11 

the  said  Schoole:  that  as  the  profits  shall  airise 
from  ye  s'd  land,  every  man  may  be  proportion- 
ally abated  of  his  some  of  the  s'd  30  pounds 
aforesaid,  freely  to  be  given  to  ye  use  aforesaid. 
Aridyt  ye  said  Feofees  shall  have  power  to  make 
a  Rate  for  the  necessary  charg  of  improving 
the  s'd  land;  they  giving  account  thereof  to 
the  Towne,  or  to  those  whome  they  should 
depute. 

"  John  Hunting,  Eldr  Etiazer  Lusher,  Francis 
Chickering,  John  Dwight  &  Michael  Powell, 
are  chosen  Feofees  and  betrusted  in  the  behalf 
of  the  Schoole  as  aforesaid." 

Dedham  was  much  too  enterprising  to  oblige 
its  students  to  put  up  longer  than  was  actually 
necessary  with  the  inconveniences  of  a  building 
not  built  to  be  a  school;  and  in  January,  1648- 
1649,  it  was  voted  at  town  meeting  to  erect 
what  should  serve  both  as  a  schoolhouse  and 
watch-house.  The  dimensions  used  in  this 
structure  have  been  preserved  in  the  town 
records.  They  show  us  that  the  schoolhouse 
part  of  the  building  was  eighteen  feet  long  — 
fourteen  feet  besides  the  chimney  —  and  fif- 
teen feet  wide;  the  watch-house  consisted  of  a 
lean-to  six  feet  wide  and  set  at  the  back  of  the 
chimney.  Thus  we  have  only  to  imagine,  as 
one  writer  has  picturesquely  put  it,  "  the  busy 
hum  of  the  school  work  filling  the  east  room  by 
day  and  the  faithful  watching  of  the  sentinel 


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12  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

from  the  windows  of  the  western  lean-to  during 
the  long  and  lonely  nights,  to  understand  how 
child  and  man  in  those  old  days  performed  their 
several  parts  in  laying  the  foundation  of  a  free 
school  and  a  free  state." 

Dedham's  school  enterprise  differed  from  that 
of  many  another  New  England  town  in  that  its 
educational  expenditures  were  regularly  pro- 
vided for,  and  the  man  entrusted  with  the  train- 
ing of  its  youth  adequately  paid  for  his  work. 
We  find  it  written  down  as  the  vote  of  eighty- 
four  "  freemen,"  who  assembled  in  1651  to 
legislate  on  these  matters,  that  the  "  settled 
mayntenance  or  wages  of  the  schoolmr:  shall  be 
20  pounds  p  ann  at  ye  leaste."  This  at  a  time 
when  men  hired  in  some  other  Massachusetts 
towns  were  being  given  one  pound  "  to  tech  the 
biger  children."  So  wretchedly,  indeed,  were 
many  of  the  early  schoolmasters  paid  that  they 
frequently  served  summonses,  acted  as  court 
messengers,  and  even  dug  graves  to  eke  out 
their  slender  incomes.  One  case  is  extant  of  a 
schoolmaster  who  took  in  washing! 

Yet  all  the  while,  more  schools  and  better 
schools  were  being  cherished  as  an  ideal. 
"  Lord,  for  schools  everywhere  among  us! " 
prayed  the  great  and  good  John  Eliot  at  a  synod 
of  the  Boston  churches  in  the  early  days  of  the 
settlement.  "  Oh,  that  our  schools  may  flour- 
ish!   That  every  member  of  this  assembly  may 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  13 

go  home  and  procure  a  good  school  to  be  en- 
couraged in  the  town  where  he  lives.  That 
before  we  die  we  may  see  a  good  school  in  every 
plantation  in  the  country!  "  Ehot  died  in  1690. 
How  slowly  his  prayer  was  answered  may  be 
seen  in  a  town  report  of  nearly  thirty  years 
later,  which  reflects  an  average  community's 
attitude  on  school  matters: 

"  December  7,  1719:  Voted  that  we  will  hier 
a  school  master,  if  we  can  hier  one  in  town  for 
this  winter  till  the  last  of'  March  insuing  the 
Date  here  of,  upon  the  following  conditions,  viz; 
Wrighters  to  pay  four  pence  a  week  and  Reeders 
three  pence  a  week  and  the  Rest  to  be  paid  by 
the  town." 

"November,  1724:  Boys  from  six  to  twelve 
years  of  age  shall  pay  the  schoolmaster  whether 
they  go  to  school  or  not,  four  pence  a  week  for 
Wrighters,  and  three  pence  a  week  for  Reeders." 

In  this  town  a  special  committee  was  soon 
appointed  to  have  educational  matters  in 
charge,  and  we  read  under  date  of  November  2, 
1787,  that  these  citizens  were  empowered  to 
hire  a  schoolmaster  "  as  cheap  as  they  can  and 
as  speedy  as  they  can." 

Not  long  after  this  the  great  question  of 
general  taxation  for  free  public  schools  became 
an  issue  everywhere,  and  the  step,  though  op- 
posed by  many  who  had  no  children,  finally 
prevailed.    Often  the  district  and  not  the  town 


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14  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

was  the  unit  of  school  management,  however, 
and  it  was  therefore  only  intermittently  that 
education  was  dispensed  in  the  rude  little 
structure  erected  for  the  purpose.  Thus,  from 
the  town  meeting  reports  of  one  community, 
may  be  read: 

"  1786:  Voted  not  to  have  schooling  this 
winter. 

"  1787:  Voted  to  raise  the  sum  of  £10  and 
divide  it  among  the  five  school  districts,  each 
district  to  receive  40s. 

"  1789:  No  money  appropriated  for  schools 
on  account  of  building  the  meeting  house. 

"  1790:  The  building  erected  on  the  hill  for 
a  pest  house  was  removed  into  the  town  street 
for  a  school  house." 

The  most  cheerful  things  about  these  early 
school  buildings  was  the  color  they  were  painted. 
Latterly,  there  has  been  an  attempt  to  shatter 
one  of  our  cherished  New  England  traditions 
by  asserting  that  this  color  was  not  red.  But 
the  weight  of  evidence  is  all  on  the  other  side; 
the  "  little  red  schoolhouse  "  remains.  It  was 
usually  a  small,  one-room  building  —  this 
schoolhouse  —  which  was  entered  through  a 
shed-like  hallway  in  which  wood  was  piled  and 
where  hats,  coats,  and  dinner-pails  were  also 
stored.  Sometimes  wood  was  furnished  by  the 
parents,  the  child  with  a  stingy  father  being 
then,  by  common  consent,  denied  intimate  re- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  15 

lations  with  the  fire.  After  the  time  of  fire- 
places a  large  square  stove  in  the  center  of  the 
room  was  the  usual  method  of  heating.  From 
this  a  long  pipe,  suspended  by  chains,  reached 
to  the  end  of  the  building,  where  the  chimney 
stood.  Frequently  this  primitive  heating-plant 
had  to  cope  with  the  problem  of  raising  the 
temperature  from  twelve  below  zero,  when 
school  opened,  to  a  temperature  favorable  to 
"  wrighting." 

The  first  seats  in  these  little  red  schoolhouses 
were  planks  set  on  legs.  These  were  sometimes 
taken  out  at  noontime,  turned  bottom  upward, 
and  used  for  sliding  down  hill  on  the  snow 
crust.  Later,  there  were  benches  with  vertical 
backs  set  at  right  angles  to  the  seats,  torturing 
things  for  a  child  to  sit  on  during  the  long 
sessions  kept  by  some  of  these  early  schools, 
"  nine  hours  a  day  in  summer,  six  days  a  week." 

New  Haven  held  school  from  "  6  in  ye  morn- 
ing, to  11  a  clock  in  ye  forenoon,  and  from  1  a 
clock  in  the  afternoon  to  5  a  clock  in  the  after- 
noon in  Summer  and  4  in  Winter."  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  received  a  gift  of  a  bell  from 
England,  in  1723,  which,  we  learn,  rang  for 
school  at  seven  in  the  morning  from  March  to 
November,  and  at  eight  from  November  to 
March.  School  here  closed  at  four  in  winter 
and  at  five  in  summer.  But  when  the  school- 
house  door  once  was  shut,  dull  care  was  left 


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16  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

behind.  There  was  no  home  study  in  those 
days.  Not  only  did  the  pupils  get  their  lessons 
and  recite  them  in  the  schoolroom,  but  they 
also  wrote  their  compositions  there  and  —  as 
soon  as  education  had  developed  to  that  point 
—  did  a  good  deal  of  general  reading  besides. 
Thus  the  evenings  were  free  for  the  sleigh-rides, 
candy  parties,  and  skating  which  assured  to 
our  New  England  forebears  clear  eyes  and  rosy 
cheeks  —  instead  of  the  spectacles  and  the 
stoop  of  youngsters  to  be  seen  everywhere  in 
our  time. 

All  this  early  zeal  for  public  education,  it 
must  be  remembered,  however,  was  in  behalf  of 
boys.  Girls  were  not  admitted  at  all  to  the 
first  tax-supported  schools;  and  Northampton, 
Massachusetts,  was  no  more  remiss  than  many 
another  town  in  that  it  had  sustained  boys' 
schools  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  before 
there  came  to  be  even  a  question  (in  1788)  of 
educating  girls,  also.1  The  town,  even  at  this 
time,  voted  to  be  at  no  expense  in  this  matter, 
though  four  years  later  girls  between  the  ages 
of  eight  and  fifteen  were  permitted  to  attend 
its  schools  from  May  to  November. 

1 "  More  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  yeara  elapsed  from  the  open- 

Xof  the  first  public  school  in  Massachusetts  before  one  girl  was 
itted;  and  not  until  1828  —  one  hundred  and  ninety  years 
after  the  establishment  of  the  first  school  —  were  girls  admitted 
with  full  equality  to  the  entire  privileges  of  a  thorough  public  educa- 
tion." Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  February, 
1873. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  17 

Such  education  as  girls  received  in  the  early 
days  had  all  been  in  dame  schools,  though  by 
the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  some  New 
England  towns  had  made  provision  for  "  young 
females "  in  short  summer  terms  or  at  the 
noon  hours  of  the  boys'  school.  Governor 
Winthrop,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  he 
had  three  wives  who  were  all  educated  women, 
evidently  felt  very  strongly  that  girls  did  not 
greatly  need  learning.  In  his  diary  for  1645 
we  find:  "  The  Gov.  of  Hartford,  Ct.  came  to 
Boston  and  brought  his  wife  with  him.  A 
goodly  young  woman  of  special  parts,  who  has 
fallen  into  a  sad  infirmity,  the  loss  of  her  under- 
standing and  reason  which  has  been  growing  upon 
her  divers  years  by  occasion  of  her  giving  herself 
wholly  to  reading  and  writing  and  had  written 
many  books.  Her  husband  being  very  tender 
and  loving  with  her  was  loth  to  grieve  her,  but 
he  saw  his  error  when  it  was  too  late.  For  if 
she  had  attended  her  household  affairs,  and 
such  things  as  belong  to  women,  and  not  gone 
out  of  her  way  and  calling  to  meddle  in  such 
things  as  are  proper  for  men  whose  minds  are 
stronger  she  had  kept  her  wits  and  might  have 
improved  them  usefully  and  honorably  in  the 
place  God  had  set  her." 

Notwithstanding  the  sad  fate  of  this  wife  of 
a  Connecticut  governor,  it  was  in  Connecticut 
that  there  was  established  the  first  school  ex- 


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18  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

clusively  for  girls  in  branches  not  taught  in  the 
common  schools.  This  dates  from  1780  and 
was  opened  in  Middletown  by  William  Wood- 
bridge,  a  graduate  of  Yale  College.  Its  classes 
were  held  in  the  evenings,  and  the  branches 
taught  were  Grammar,  Geography,  and  the  Art 
of  Composition.  Not  very  disturbing  subjects; 
yet  popular  sentiment  was  strongly  against  the 
movement.  "  Who,"  it  was  demanded,  "  will 
cook  our  food  and  mend  our  clothes  if  girls  are 
to  be  taught  philosophy  and  astronomy?  "  An 
explanation  of  the  great  difficulty  that  most 
American  women  of  to-day  experience  in  keeping 
their  check-books  straight  may  be  found  in  the 
ridicule  accorded  New  England  women  when 
they  first  undertook  to  study  mental  arithmetic. 
"  If  you  expect  to  become  widows  and  carry 
pork  to  market,"  they  were  told,  "  it  may  be 
well  enough  to  study  mental  arithmetic.  Other- 
wise keep  to  the  womanly  branches."  In  short, 
a  girl  who  could  read,  sew,  and  recite  the  shorter 
catechism  was  held  to  have  acquired  all  the 
education  she  needed.  Up  to  1828,  indeed, 
girls  were  admitted  to  the  public  schools  only 
from  April  to  October,  the  months  when  the 
young  males  of  the  land  were  productively  at 
work  on  the  farms.  This  was  exceedingly  con- 
sistent; the  chief  object  of  education  in  New 
England  frankly,  from  the  very  first,  was  to 
train   up  a  learned   ministry.     And   girls,   of 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  19 

course,  did  not  enter  into  this  consideration. 
One  Anne  Hutchinson  had  been  enough. 

Hampton,  New  Hampshire,  however,  stands 
out  from  all  other  New  England  towns  in  that 
it  made  definite  provision,  in  its  very  first  vote 
on  school  matters,  that  girls,  as  well  as  boys, 
were  to  share  in  its  educational  privileges. 
This  was  in  1649,  and  the  resolution  reads: 
"  The  selectmen  of  Hampton  have  agreed  with 
John  Legat  for  the  present  yeare  insueing,  to 
teach  and  instruct  all  the  children  of  or  belong- 
ing to  our  Town,  both  mayle  and  femaile  (wch 
are  capable  of  learning)  to  write  and  read  and 
cast  accountes  (if  it  be  desired)  as  diligently 
and  as  carefully  as  he  is  able  to  instruct  them. 
And  allso  to  teach  and  instruct  them  once  in  a 
week,  or  more  in  some  Orthodox  catechism  pro- 
vided for  them  by  their  parents  or  masters. 
And  in  consideration  hereof  we  have  agreed  to 
pay  the  same  John  Legat,  the  som  of  Twenty 
pounds  in  Come,  and  cattle  and  butter."  This 
was  very  enlightened  legislation  for  that  day; 
and  Hampton  may  well  be  proud  of  it. 

As  soon  as  the  elementary  schools  were  well 
established  in  Massachusetts,  that  State  pro- 
vided by  law  (1647)  that  "  when  any  town  in- 
creases to  the  number  of  one  hundred  families 
they  shall  set  up  a  grammar  school  the  master 
thereof  being  able  to  instruct  youths  as  far  as 
they  may  be  fitted  to  the  university."    Massa- 


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20  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

chusetts  meant  that  this  law  should  be  observed, 
too.  In  1665  we  find  the  town  of  Concord  being 
severely  criticized  by  the  General  Court  for 
having  no  Latin  School!  The  masters  of  these 
grammar  schools  were  almost  always  college 
graduates;  from  1671  down  to  the  Revolution 
twenty-two  of  the  men  who  thus  served  Plym- 
outh were  happy  possessors  of  a  Harvard  degree. 

Frequently  the  competition  among  select- 
men in  search  of  a  good  teacher  was  very  keen. 
Thus  we  learn  from  the  Woburn  records  of 
1710  that  "  the  Selectmen  met  to  consider  how 
they  might  obtain  a  suitable  person  to  keep 
grammar  school,  but  found  it  very  difficult  to 
do  so  by  reason  that  they  heard  that  there  was 
none  to  be  had  at  the  Colledge.  Whereupon 
they  appointed  Ensign  John  Pierce  to  goe  to 
Boston  and  try  if  Dr.  Oaks,  his  son,  or  Mr. 
Kallender's  son  might  be  obtained  for  that 
end."  In  an  entry  for  the  next  month  we 
read: 

"  The  Selectmen  of  Woburn  being  met  to- 
gether Ensign  John  Pierce  made  the  following 
return:  that  he  had  been  at  Boston  to  speak 
with  Dr.  Oaks,  his  son  and  Mr.  Kallender's 
son,  and  found  that  they  were  already  improved 
and  so  could  not  be  obtained,  and  that  he  had 
made  inquiry  about  some  other  suitable  person 
to  keep  a  grammar  school  in  Woburn,  but  could 
not  hear  of  any  to  be  had.     Soon  after  the 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  21 

Selectmen  were  informed  that  it  was  possible 
that  Sir  *  Wigglesworth  might  be  obtained  to 
teach  a  grammar  school  for  our  towne.  Where- 
upon the  said  Selectmen  appointed  Lieut.  John 
Carter  to  go  to  Cambridge,  and  treat  with  him 
about  that  matter.  Accordingly  soon  after 
Lieut.  Carter  made  return  to  the  Selectmen 
that  he  had  been  at  Cambridge,  and  had  dis- 
course with  Sir  Wigglesworth  with  reference 
to  keeping  a  grammar  school  in  Woburn,  and 
that  the  said  Sir  Wigglesworth  did  give  some 
encouragement  in  the  matter,  but  could  not 
give  a  full  answer  until  the  beginning  of  the 
following  week,  and  then  appointed  him  to 
come  again  for  an  answer.  But  when  the  said 
Lieut  Carter  came  to  Cambridge  at  the  time 
appointed,  he  was  informed  that  Sir  Wiggles- 
worth was  engaged  or  gone  to  Casco  Bay  Fort 
to  keep  a  schoole  there."  The  best  that  Wo- 
burn was  able  to  do,  after  two  journeys  to 
Boston  and  two  more  to  Cambridge,  was  to 
secure  a  man  who  agreed  to  teach  their  grammar 
school  for  twelve  pounds  and  "  board  "  until 
he  could  get  a  better  job. 

Not  only  was  it  hard  to  get  a  teacher,  but  it 
was  exceedingly  hard  to  get  the  wherewithal 
to  pay  him  after  he  had  been  found.  Woburn 's 
taxes  were  paid  in  shoes,  those  of  Hingham  in 

1  Graduate  students  who  had  ft 
were  called  Sir  by  their  colleges  a 


zeacy  Google 


I 


22  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

pails.  In  this  latter  town  the  cost  to  parents, 
in  1G87,  of  schooling  for  their  children  was 
"  four  pence  a  week  for  such  as  learned  Latin, 
such  as  learn  English  two  pence  a  week,  and 
such  as  learn  to  write  and  cypher,  three  pence 
a  week."  Nor  could  parents  dodge  the  school- 
master tax  by  keeping  their  children  at  home. 
When  some  in  Ipswich  tried  to  do  this,  the 
selectmen  were  ordered  to  take  a  list  of  all 
children  from  six  to  twelve  years  of  age  and  to 
charge  their  parents  for  their  school  tuition, 
whether  the  child  went  to  school  or  not. 

The  Bible,  the  catechism,  and  the  psalter 
were  almost  the  only  books  used  in  these  primi- 
tive schools,  and  the  grouping  was  into  a  "  first 
Psalter  class,"  a  "  second  Testament  class," 
and  so  on.  For  a  century  there  were  no  copying 
books  and  no  slates,  the  ciphering  and  writing 
being  done  on  paper  after  a  pattern  set  by  the 
master  from  his  ciphering  book,  which  was  a 
written  copy  of  a  printed  text-book.  To  the 
"  Rule  of  Three  "  and  the  "  Double  Rule  of 
Three "  a  great  deal  of  attention  was  given. 
Beginners  acquired  knowledge  of  the  alphabet 
from  a  "  horn-book,"  the  name  given  to  a 
single  piece  of  paper  pasted  on  a  slab  of  wood 
and  covered  with  a  transparent  sheet  of  horn. 
The  horn  served  to  protect  from  the  moist 
fingers  of  the  child  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  letters 
of  the  alphabet,  large  and  small,  and  the  vowels 


. 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  23 

with  their  consonant  combinations.  This 
"  book "  had  a  handle  and  was  usually  at- 
tached to  the  child's  girdle. 

The  successor  of  the  "  horn-book  "  was  the 
famous  "  New  England  Primer,"  than  which  no 
volume,  save  the  Bible,  did  more  to  form  New 
England  character.  The  exact  date  of  the  first 
issue  of  this  Primer  is  not  known,  but  that  it 
came  out  prior  to  1691  we  are  sure  from  the 
fact  that  a  second  edition  was  advertised  in  a 
Boston  almanac  for  that  year.  "  There  is  now 
in  the  Press,  and  will  suddenly  be  extant,"  we 
there  read,  "  A  Second  Impression  of  the  New 
England  Primer  enlarged,  to  which  is  added, 
more  Directions  for  Spelling;  the  Prayer  of  K. 
Edward  the  6th,  and  Verses  made  by  Mr.  Rogers 
the  Martyr,  left  as  a  Legacy  to  his  children.  Sold 
by  Benjamin  Harris,  at  the  London  Coffee  House 
in  Boston." 

Benjamin  Harris  is  an  interesting  character. 
A  printer  by  vocation,  he  was  by  avocation  a 
militant  Protestant.  Hence  he  had  become 
■persona  non  grata  in  an  England  which  in  the 
eighties  of  the  seventeenth  century  looked  with 
distinct  favor  on  Catholicism.  New  England 
naturally  would  be  much  more  to  his  mind  as  a 
place  of  residence  under  these  circumstances, 
and  we  accordingly  find  him  setting  up  a  book 
and  coffee  shop  in  Boston  in  the  year  1686. 
Here  he  started  Public  Occurrences,  the  first 


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24  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

newspaper  printed  in  America,  and  brought  out 
his  famous  primer. 

Originally  a  "  primer "  was  a  volume  of 
private  devotions;  but  when  the  invention  of 
printing  made  books  cheaper,  and  those  who 
came  to  pray  desired  to  know  how  to  read, 
also,  it  became  the  custom  to  include  an  alpha- 
bet in  these  little  devotional  works.  Thus 
Harris  was  led  by  tradition,  as  well  as  by  in- 
clination, to  produce  a  primer  which  should  be 
not  only  a  text-book  for  the  young  but  also  a 
vade  viecum  for  strenuous  dissenters.  No  copy 
of  this  book  issued  previous  to  1700  is  known 
to  be  in  existence  to-day;  and  less  than  fifty 
copies  have  survived  which  were  published 
during  the  next  century,  when  the  work  was  in 
the  height  of  its  popularity.  Collectors  there- 
fore naturally  value  very  highly  early  copies 
of  this  work;  for  six  copies  of  editions  begin- 
ning with  1737  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  paid  six 
hundred  and  thirty  dollars  not  many  years  ago. 

The  first  primers  that  we  know  had  for  their 
frontispiece  a  rudely  engraved  portrait  of  the 
reigning  English  monarch,  but  when  war  with 
England  began,  various  American  patriots  suc- 
cessively occupied  this  place  of  honor,  until  it 
was  finally  accorded,  as  if  by  common  consent, 
to  George  Washington.  A  page  devoted  to  the 
alphabet  stood  at  the  beginning  of  the  book. 
This  was  followed  by  several  pages  of  "  Easy 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  25 

Syllables  for  Children. ' '  Then  were  found 
pages  grading  up  from  words  of  one  syllable  to 
words  of  six,  after  which  came  the  Lord's 
Prayer  and  the  Apostles*  Creed.  But  the  most 
interesting  thing  about  the  book  was  the 
rhymed  and  illustrated  alphabet,  a  series  of 
twenty-four  little  pictures,  each  accompanied 
by  a  two  or  three-line  jingle;  a  picture  and  a 
jingle  for  every  letter  of  the  alphabet  —  except 
J,  which  was  treated  as  though  I  with  another 
name,  and  V,  which  was  regarded  as  identical 
with  U. 

The  alphabet  had  been  taught  by  means  of 
rhymes  long  before  the  days  of  the  "  New  Eng- 
land Primer";  but  these  rhymes,  generally  sup- 
posed to  be  the  work  of  the  aggressively  Protes- 
tant Harris,  were  unique  in  character  in  that 
they  gave  to  the  children  who  read  them  en- 
during lessons  in  morals  and  the  Bible.  It  is 
a  pity  that  the  name  of  the  artist  has  not  come 
down  to  us  along  with  that  of  the  rhymester; 
for  it  would  be  hard  to  find  anywhere  pictures 
more  expressive  in  proportion  to  their  size. 
The  apples  in  the  tree  which  illustrated  the 
jingle,  since  become  a  classic: 

"  In  Adam's  Fall 
We  sinned  all," 

are  "  practicable  "  apples,  so  to  say,  and  must 
often   have  tantalizingly   made  to   water   the 


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26  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

young  mouths  agape  at  them.  The  tree  which 
Zacchaeus  climbed,  the  cock  whose  cry  smote 
Peter's  conscience,  the  ravens  which  fed  Elijah, 
and  the  ark  in  which  Noah  went  sailing  out  into 
the  flood  were  similarly  realistic.  Many  chil- 
dren come  through  our  public  schools  to-day 
without  obtaining  such  vivid  impressions  of 
classic  Bible  episodes  as  these  rhymes  and  their 
pictures  afford;  I'd  like  to  see  their  vogue  re- 
vived. 

But  I  would  not  wish  to  see  again  in  circula- 
tion what  was  undoubtedly  the  "  feature  "  of 
the  primer  in  the  mind  of  the  militant  Mr. 
Harris:  that  illustration  depicting  Mr.  John 
Rogers  burning  at  the  stake,  with  his  wife  and 
ten  children  (ten,  count  them  yourself)  looking 
on.  The  nearest  that  Rogers'  wife  and  ten 
children  ever  got  to  the  stake  and  its  cruelly 
curling  flames  was  that  they  met  the  martyr 
"  by  the  way  as  he  went  toward  Smithfield." 
The  cut  in  the  "  New  England  Primer  "  gives 
us  history  deeply  colored  by  religious  preju- 
dice. 

Another  notable  feature  of  the  book  was  the 
"  Dialogue  between  Christ,  Youth  and  the 
Devil."  It  begins  with  the  declaration  on  the 
part  of  Youth  that: 


"  Those  days  which  God  to  me  doth  send 
In  pleasure  I'm  resolved  to  spend." 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  27 

This  sentiment  pleases  the  Devil,  who  gleefully 
promises: 

"  If  thou  my  counsel  will  embrace, 
And  shun  the  ways  of  truth  and  grace, 
And  learn  to  lie  and  curse  and  swear, 
And  be  as  proud  as  any  are; 
And  with  thy  brothers  will  fall  out, 
And  sister  with  vile  language  flout; 
Yea,  6ght  and  scratch  and  also  bite, 
Then  in  thee  I  will  take  delight." 

Pedagogy  would  not  be  responsible,  in  our 
time,  for  these,  violent  and  subversive  sugges- 
tions. Nor  would  the  words  of  Death,  who 
soon  appears  to  say: 

"  Youth,  I  am  come  to  fetch  thy  breath 
And  carry  thee  to  th'  shades  of  death. 
No  pity  on  thee  can  I  show, 
Thou  hast  thy  God  offended  so. 
Thy  soul  and  body  I'll  divide, 
Thy  body  in  the  grave  I'll  hide, 
And  thy  dear  soul  in  hell  must  lie 
With  devils  to  eternity," 

carry  now  the  terror  that  they  held  for  shudder- 
ing youth  in  an  age  when  the  tortures  of  the 
damned  in  hell  were  vividly  set  forth  every 
Sunday  at  the  meeting-house. 

How  perfectly  the  Church  and  the  School 
worked  together  in  those  early  days!  The 
"  backbone "  of  the  primer  was  the  **  West- 


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2»  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

minster  Assembly's  Shorter  Catechism  "  —  that 
religious  office  which  Cotton  Mather  called  a 
"  little  watering  pot "  to  shed  good  lessons; 
and  writing-masters  were  urged  by  the  ministry 
to  set  sentences  from  this  catechism  to  be 
copied  by  their  pupils.1  Drill  in  the  catechism 
was  given  in  the  schools  no  less  regularly  than 
drill  in  spelling;  and  such  drill  was  regarded  as 
a  means  second  to  none  for  developing  those 
children  whom  Jonathan  Edwards  had  pleas- 
antly called  "  young  vipers  and  infinitely  more 
hateful  than  vipers  to  God  "  into  sober  and 
religious  men  and  women.  The  Puritan  child 
was  not  allowed  to  forget  at  school,  any  less 
than  at  church  and  in  the  home,  that  to  be  an 
earnest  and  aggressive  Christian  was  his  chief 
duty  in  life.  A  primer  published  at  Brook£eld 
as  late  as  1828  devoted  nearly  two  pages  to 
maxims  which  declared  that  "  Death  to  a  Chris- 
tian is  putting  off  rags  for  robes  "  and  appro- 
priately added  the  following  cheerful  stanza  on 

1  It  waa  made  perfectly  explicit  by  the  General  Court  that  the 
schoolmaster  was  to  be  made  thus  useful.  In  the  records  for  May 
3,  1654,  we  read: 

"  Forasmuch  as  it  greatly  concerns  the  welfare  of  this  country 
that  the  youth  thereof  be  educated,  not  only  in  good  literature  but 
sound  doctrine,  this  Court  doth,  therefore,  commend  it  to  the 
serious  consideration  and  special  care  of  the  officers  of  the  college 
and  the  selectmen  of  several  towns,  not  to  admit  or  suffer  any  such 
to  be  continued  in  the  office  or  place  of  teaching,  educating,  or  in- 
structing of  youth  or  children  in  the  college  or  schools,  that  have 
manifested  themselves  unsound  in  the  faith,  or  scandalous  in  their 
lives,  and  not  giving  due  satisfaction  according  to  the  rules  of 
Christ." 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  29 

The  Uncertainty  of  Life 

"  In  the  burying  place  may  see 
Graves  shorter  there  than  I; 
From  Death's  arrest  no  age  is  free. 

Young  children,  too,  may  die. 
My  God,  may  such  an  awful  sight 

Awakening  be  to  me. 
O!  that  by  early  grace  I  might 

For  death  prepared  be." 

A  much  more  pleasing  allusion  to  death  is 
that  first  found  in  the  1737  edition  of  the  "  New 
England  Primer  "  in  a  prayer  which  has  become 
hallowed  to  every  one  of  us  by  our  childish  as- 
sociations with  it: 

"  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep 
I  pray  the  Lord  my  soul  to  keep 
If  I  should  die  before  I  wake 
I  pray  the  Lord  my  soul  to  take." 

The  author  of  this  prayer  is  unknown,  but 
his  work  —  or  is  it  her  work?  —  having  once 
been  printed,  was  included  in  almost  every 
subsequent  edition  of  the  "  Primer  "  and  has 
become  a  part  of  the  spiritual  heritage  of  every 
New  England  child.  This  same  thing  might 
have  been  said  of  the  book  as  a  whole  in  the 
days  of  our  great-grandparents;  a  perfect  de- 
scription of  the  "  New  England  Primer  "  itself 
was  for  them  contained  in  the  apocryphal  poem 


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30  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

of  the  martyred  John  Rogers,  "  unto  his  chil- 
dren: " 

"  I  leave  you  here  a  little  book 
For  you  to  look  upon 
That  you  may  see  your  father's  face 
When  I  am  dead  and  gone." 

As  we  turn  the  crumbling  pages  and  read  the 
queer  old  verses  of  the  "  New  England  Primer  ", 
we  see  in  imagination  the  hulking  forms  of  the 
boys  who  graduated  from  its  teachings  to  be- 
come New  England's  fathers,  and  descry,  too, 
the  winsome  faces  of  those  gentle  maidens  who 
became  their  wives  and  helpmeets.  All  honor 
to  this  book! 

In  modern  reminiscences  about  the  "  little 
red  schoolhouse  "  the  "  jography  "  book  plays 
a  large  part.  But  in  Colonial  days  this  branch 
of  knowledge  was  regarded  rather  as  "  a  diver- 
sion for  a  winter's  evening  "  than  as  a  necessary 
part  of  the  school  curriculum.  Not  until  after 
the  Revolution  was  the  topic  taken  up  in  the 
elementary  schools.  Geography  was  first  made 
a  condition  of  entering  Harvard  in  1815,  and 
1825  is  the  earliest  date  that  one  finds  it  gener- 
ally named  among  the  required  studies  in  the 
public  schools.  The  first  American  school 
geography  was  published  in  1784.  Its  author 
was  Reverend  Jedediah  Morse,  father  of  the 
inventor  of  the  electric  telegraph,  who  is  de- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  31 

scribed  on  the  title-pages  of  most  editions  of  his 
books  as  "  D.D.  .  .  .  Minister  of  the  Congrega- 
tion in  Charlestown,  Massachusetts."  From 
one  of  these  books,  "  Geography  Made  Easy ", 
we  get  some  authentic  information  about  schools 
in  Boston  in  1800.  There  were  seven  of  them, 
we  learn,  "  supported  wholly  at  the  public  ex- 
pense, and  in  them  the  children  of  every  class 
of  citizens  freely  associate."  Three  of  these 
schools  were  "  English  grammar  schools "  in 
which  "  the  children  of  both  sexes  from  7  to 
14  years  of  age  are  instructed  in  spelling,  ac- 
centing and  reading  the  English  language  with 
propriety;  also  in  English  grammar  and  com- 
position, together  with  the  rudiments  of  geog- 
raphy." In  three  other  schools  "  the  same 
children  are  taught  writing  and  arithmetic. 
The  schools  are  attended  alternately,  and  each 
of  them  is  furnished  with  an  Usher  or  assis- 
tant. The  masters  of  these  schools  have  each 
a  salary  of  666  2-3  dollars  per  annum  pay- 
able quarterly."  Mention  is  also  made  thus 
authentically  of  the  "  Latin  grammar  school 
to  which  none  are  admitted  till  ten  years  of 
age." 

The  large  and  prosperous  town  of  Boston,  it 
will  thus  be  seen,  had  progressed  considerably 
in  an  educational  way  since  the  days  of  Phile- 
mon Parmont.  But  in  the  country  districts  of 
New  England,  the  schools  were  scarcely  less 


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32 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


primitive  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
than  they  had  been  at  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth.  The  school  committee  of  Woburn, 
to  be  sure,  had  by  this  time  so  far  advanced 
beyond  the  limitations  of  the  "  New  England 
Primer  "  as  to  be  recommending  for  use  Perry's 
"  Spelling  Book  and  Grammar ",  Webster's 
"Institutes",  "The  Children's  Friend",  "La- 
dies' Accidence  ",  Morse's  "  Geography  ",  Chee- 
ver's  "  Accidence  ",  or  "  The  Philadelphia  Latin 
Grammar",  Corderius'  "Colloquies",  Aesop's 
"Fables",  Eutropius,  Castalio's  "Latin  Testa- 
ment", Virgil,  Tully,  the  Greek  Grammar  and 
Testament,  and  "  Jenkin's  Art  of  writing,  with 
due  attention  to  Paper,  Pens  and  Ink."  But 
this  degree  of  development  was  rather  unusual 
and  may  be  credited  to  the  town's  proximity  to 
Boston.  In  small  seaport  places  thick,  rough 
slates  and  large,  heavy  pencils  were  then  just 
coming  into  use,  and  even  these  were  still  un- 
known in  the  hill-districts. 

For  that  Connecticut  town  which  Jane  De 
Forest  Shelton  has  made  the  background  of  her 
fascinating  book,  "  Salt-Box  House  ",  Dilworth's 
"  Spelling-book  ",  printed  in  Glasgow,  still  served 
as    the   foundation-stone   of   instruction;    and 


1  Samuel  Applet.on,  well  remembered  in  Boston  as  a  merchant 
and  philanthropist,  taught  school,  in  178(5,  for  his  board,  lodging, 
washing,  and  sixty-seven  cents  per  week,  Mrs.  Eurle,  in  giving  this 
data,  comments  that  such  pay  was  then  deemed  "  liberal  and 
ample." 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  33 

until  Noah  Webster  published  his  book  of  "  Se- 
lections "  in  1789,  the  Bible  was  the  only  read- 
ing-book—  save  the  "New  England  Primer." 
"  But  few  of  the  children  owned  books,  black- 
boards had  not  been  thought  of,  and  the  teacher 
went  from  one  to  another  and  '  set  sums '  for 
them  to  puzzle  over  —  to  '  find  the  decimal  of 
17s,  9d.  2 far.!  *  There  were  recitations  in  con- 
cert of  the  multiplication  table,  and  those  of 
weights  and  measures  —  including  12  sacks 
make  one  load  and  10  cowhides  make  one 
dicker. 
"  Exercises  in  rhyme  were  also  given  such  as: 

'  A  gentleman  a  chaise  did  buy, 
A  horse  and  harness  too; 
They  cost  the  sum  of  three  score  pounds, 
Upon  my  word  'tis  true. 
The  harness  came  to  half  the  horse, 
The  horse  twice  of  the  chaise, 
And  if  you  find  the  price  of  them, 
Take  them  and  go  your  ways.'  " 

The  country  school-teacher  needed  to  be 
something  of  a  craftsman  as  well  as  a  scholar, 
for  he  was  constantly  being  called  upon  to 
make  with  his  penknife  pens  from  the  conve- 
nient goose-quill.  " '  Please  mend  my  pen  *  was 
a  request  he  heard  continually,  as  his  charges 
stood  at  the  long  desk  nailed  to  the  side  of  the 
wall,  toiling  from  pothooks  to  the  elaborate 
capitals  in  which  they  delighted.    Ink  was  made 


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34 


SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


from  ink-powders  or  sticks  dissolved  in  vinegar, 
or  more  primitively  from  soot  and  vinegar. 
The  ink-bottles  were  of  leather,  and  the  writing- 
books  of  large  sheets  of  paper  stitched  to- 
gether." ' 

In  the  summer  term  of  this  hill-town  Con- 
necticut school  a  woman  was  occasionally  em- 
ployed as  teacher,  and  then  small  boys  as  well 
as  the  girls  were  taught  to  make  patchwork, 
to  knit,  and  to  work  samplers.  Never  am  I  so 
glad  that  I  was  born  in  the  late  nineteenth,  in- 
stead of  the  early  eighteenth  century,  as  when  I 
contemplate  this  Colonial  accomplishment!  For 
not  to  be  able  to  show  a  carefully  designed  and 
skilfully  wrought  sampler  would  have  been  an 
unspeakable  disgrace  in  a  schoolgirl  of  that 
period.  By  this  means  the  young  daughter  of 
the  house  was  taught  to  embroider  the  letters 
needed  to  mark  her  household  linen,  and  from 
such  humble  beginnings  was  led  gently  on  until 
she  could  reproduce  gorgeous  flowers,  odd- 
shaped  buildings,  and  complicated  pastoral 
scenes  in  which  perched  birds  as  large  as  ele- 
phants and  roses  larger  than  either. 

To  the  research  worker  there  is  great  value 
in  many  of  these  samplers,  for  the  reason  that 
they  were  usually  inscribed  with  the  name  and 
date  of  the  maker,  as  well  as,  sometimes,  with 
the  place  of  her  birth.  Often,  too,  there  was  a 
'  "  The  Salt-Box  House"  :  Baker  &  Taylor. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  35 

prim  little  message  that  marvelously  re-creates 
for  us  the  personality  of  this  long-ago  child. 
Thus: 

"  Lora  Standish  is  my  Name 
Lord,  guide  my  heart  that  I  may  do  thy  Will 
Also  fill  my  hands  with  such  convenient  skill 
As  will  conduce  to  Virtue  void  of  Shame, 
And  I  will  give  the  Glory  to  Thy  Name." 

Knitting  was  another  housewifely  branch 
commonly  taught  in  the  schools.  Initials  were 
often  knit  into  mittens  and  stockings,  and  one 
young  miss  of  Shelburne,  New  Hampshire, 
could  and  did  knit  the  alphabet  and  a  verse  of 
poetry  into  a  single  pair  of  mittens!  We  find 
the  head  of  a  dame  school  at  Newport  adver- 
tising that  she  will  teach  "  Sewing,  Marking, 
Queen  Stitch  and  Knitting",  while  a  Boston 
shopkeeper  offers  to  take  children  and  young 
ladies  to  board,  holding  out  as  an  inducement 
that  he  will  teach  them  "  Dresden  and  Em- 
broidery on  gauze,  Tent  Stitch  and  all  sorts  of 
Coloured  Work."  Mr.  Brownell,  the  Boston 
schoolmaster  in  1716,  taught  "  Young  Gentle 
Women  and  Children  all  sorts  of  Fine  Works 
as  Feather  Works,  Filagree,  and  Painting  on 
Glass,  Embroidering  a  new  Way,  Turkey-work 
for  Handkerchiefs  two  new  ways,  fine  new 
Fashion  purses,  flourishing  and  plain  Work." 

In  the  larger  towns,  school  kept  open  almost 


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36 


SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 


if 


continuously,  and  because  of  this,  precocious 
lads  were  often  ready  for  college  at  what  seems 
to  us  an  absurdly  early  age.  Frequently  a 
youngster  entered  the  Boston  Latin  School  at 
six  and  a  half  years  —  and  sometimes  he  could 
already  read  Greek  a  little,  having  been  taught 
this  tongue  by  a  doting  parent.  John  Trum- 
bull, who  attended  one  of  the  best  schools  of 
the  period,  —  in  the  little  town  of  Lebanon, 
Connecticut,  —  made  such  good  progress  under 
that  excellent  schoolmaster,  Nathan  Tisdale, 
that  he  was  ready  to  be  admitted  to  college  at 
the  age  of  twelve.  Trumbull's  biography  gives 
us  some  particularly  interesting  glimpses  of 
education  in  Connecticut  during  the  score  of 
years  preceding  the  Revolution. 

For  a  picture  of  life  in  a  Connecticut  school 
at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  one  can- 
not do  better  than  turn  to  the  autobiography 
of  Samuel  G.  Goodrich,  or  "  Peter  Parley  "  as 
he  called  himself  on  the  title-pages  of  his  numer- 
ous books.  Goodrich  was  born  in  1793  in  the 
little  farming  town  of  Ridgefield,  Connecticut, 
and  he  attended  there  a  district  school  whose 
immediate  surroundings  were: 

"  —  bleak  and  desolate.  Loose,  squat  stone 
walls,  with  innumerable  breaches,  inclosed  the 
adjacent  fields.  A  few  tufts  of  elder,  with  here 
and  there  a  patch  of  briers  and  pokeweed,  flour- 
ished in  the  gravelly  soil.    Not  a  tree,  however, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  37 

remained,  save  an  aged  chestnut.  This  cer- 
tainly had  not  been  spared  for  shade  or  orna- 
ment, but  probably  because  it  would  have  cost 
too  much  labor  to  cut  it  down;  for  it  was  of 
ample  girth. 

"  The  schoolhouse  chimney  was  of  stone, 
and  the  fireplace  was  six  feet  wide  and  four 
deep.  The  flue  was  so  ample  and  so  perpendicu- 
lar that  the  rain,  sleet  and  snow  fell  directly  to 
the  hearth.  In  winter  the  battle  for  life  with 
green  sizzling  fuel,  which  was  brought  in  lengths 
and  cut  up  by  the  scholars,  was  a  stern  one. 
Not  unfrequently  the  wood,  gushing  with  sap 
as  it  was,  chanced  to  let  the  fire  go  out,  and  as 
there  was  no  living  without  fire,  the  school  was 
dismissed,  whereat  all  the  scholars  rejoiced. 

"  I  was  about  six  years  old  when  I  first  went 
to  school.  My  teacher  was  '  Aunt  Delight,'  a 
maiden  lady  of  fifty,  short  and  bent,  of  sallow 
complexion  and  solemn  aspect.  We  were  all 
seated  upon  benches  made  of  slabs  — -  boards 
having  the  exterior  or  rounded  part  of  the  log 
on  one  side.  .  .  .  The  children  were  called  up 
one  by  one  by  Aunt  Delight,  who  sat  on  a  low 
chair  and  required  each,  as  a  preliminary,  '  to 
make  his  manners,'  which  consisted  of  a  small 
sudden  nod.  She  then  placed  the  spelling-book 
before  the  pupil,  and  with  a  penknife  pointed, 
one  by  one,  to  the  letters  of  the  Alphabet,  say- 
ing *  What's  that? ' 


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38  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  I  believe  I  achieved  the  alphabet  that 
summer.  Two  years  later  I  went  to  the  winter 
school  at  the  same  place  kept  by  Lewis  Olm- 
stead  —  a  man  who  made  a  business  of  plough- 
ing, mowing,  carting  manure,  etc.,  in  the  sum- 
mer, and  of  teaching  school  in  winter.  He  was  a 
celebrity  in  ciphering,  and  Squire  Seymour  de- 
clared he  was  the  greatest  '  arithmeticker  '  in 
Fairfield  County.  There  was  not  a  grammar,  a 
geography  or  a  history  of  any  kind  in  the 
school.  Reading,  writing  and  arithmetic  were 
the  only  things  taught,  and  these  very  indiffer- 
ently —  not  wholly  from  the  stupidity  of  the 
teacher,  but  because  he  had  forty  scholars,  and 
the  custom  of  the  age  required  no  more  than  he 
performed." 

While  we  are  on  the  subject  of  the  pupils  and 
schoolmasters  in  Connecticut,  let  us  renew  our 
acquaintance  with  Ichabod  Crane,  that  Con- 
necticut schoolmaster  who  "  tarried  ",  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  —  or  as  Irving  expressed  it  for  him, 
—  in  Sleepy  Hollow  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
structing the  children  of  the  vicinity. 

"  His  school-house  was  a  low  building  of  one 
large  room,  rudely  constructed  of  logs;  the 
windows  partly  glazed  and  partly  patched  with 
leaves  of  copy-books.  It  was  most  ingeniously 
secured  at  vacant  hours,  by  a  withe  twisted  in 
the  handle  of  the  door  and  stakes  set  against 
the  window-shutters;    so  that  though  a  thief 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  39 

might  get  in  with  perfect  ease  he  would  find 
some  embarrassment  in  getting  out  .  .  .  The 
school-house  stood  just  at  the  foot  of  a  woody 
hill,  with  a  brook  running  close  by,  and  a 
formidable  birch-tree  growing  at  one  end  of  it. 
From  hence  the  low  murmur  of  his  pupils' 
voices,  conning  over  their  lessons,  might  be 
heard  of  a  drowsy  summer's  day,  like  the  hum 
of  a  bee-hive;  interrupted  now  and  then  by 
the  authoritative  voice  of  the  master,  in  the 
tone  of  menace  or  command;  or,  peradventure, 
by  the  appalling  sound  of  the  birch,  as  he  urged 
some  tardy  loiterer  along  the  flowery  path  of 
knowledge.  Truth  to  say  he  was  a  conscien- 
tious man,  that  ever  bore  in  mind  the  golden 
maxim  *  spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child.' 
Ichabod  Crane's  children  certainly  were  not 
spoiled. 

"  The  revenue  arising  from  his  school  was 
small  and  would  have  been  scarcely  sufficient 
to  furnish  him  with  daily  bread;  but  to  help 
out  his  maintenance,  he  was,  according  to 
country  custom,  boarded  and  lodged  at  the 
houses  of  the  farmers  whose  children  he  in- 
structed. With  these  he  lived  successively  a 
week  at  a  time,  thus  going  the  rounds  of  the 
neighborhood  with  all  his  worldly  effects  tied 
up  in  a  cotton  handkerchief.  That  all  this 
might  not  be  too  onerous  on  the  purses  of  the 
rustic  patrons,  who  are  apt  to  consider  the  costs 


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40 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


of  schooling  a  grievous  burden,  and  school- 
masters as  mere  drones,  he  had  various  ways 
of  rendering  himself  both  useful  and  agreeable. 
He  assisted  the  farmers  occasionally  in  the 
lighter  labors  of  their  farms;  helped  to  make 
hay;  mended  the  fences;  took  the  horses  to 
water;  drove  the  cows  from  pasture;  and  cut 
wood  for  the  winter  fire.  He  laid  aside,  too,  all 
the  dominant  dignity  and  absolute  sway  with 
which  he  lorded  it  in  his  little  empire  the  school, 
and  became  wonderfully  gentle  and  ingratia- 
ting. He  found  favor  in  the  eyes  of  the  mothers 
by  petting  the  children,  particularly  the  young- 
est; and  like  the  lion  bold  which  whilom  so 
magnanimously  the  lamb  did  hold,  he  would 
sit  with  a  child  on  his  knee  and  rock  a  cradle 
with  his  foot  for  whole  hours  together. 

"  In  addition  to  his  other  vocations  he  was 
the  singing-master  of  the  neighborhood,  and 
picked  up  many  bright  shillings  by  instructing 
the  young  folks  in  psalmody.  It  was  a  matter 
of  no  little  vanity  to  him  on  Sundays,  to  take 
his  station  in  front  of  the  church  gallery,  with 
a  band  of  chosen  singers,  where  in  his  own  mind, 
he  completely  carried  away  the  palm  from  the 
parson.  .  .  .  Thus  by  divers  little  makeshifts 
.  .  .  the  worthy  pedagogue  got  on  tolerably 
well  enough,  and  was  thought  by  all  who  under- 
stood nothing  of  the  labor  of  head-work,  to 
have  a  wonderful  easy  life  of  it." 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  41 

Ichabod  Crane  had  apparently  chosen  teach- 
ing for  his  life  work,  but  in  most  villages  where 
the  schoolmaster  "  boarded  round "  the  in- 
structors were  young  students  helping  them- 
selves through  college  and  scrupulously  saving 
their  seventeen  to  twenty-five  dollars  a  month 
toward  the  fees  they  must  soon  pay.  Often 
they  suffered  much  as  they  "  boarded."  The 
following  amusing  paragraphs  from  what  pur- 
ports to  be  a  schoolmaster's  diary  written  early 
in  the  last  century  give  a  fairly  faithful  picture 
of  one  week's 

BOARDING  ROUND  IN  VERMONT 

"  Monday.  Went  to  board  at  Mr.  B's;  had 
a  baked  gander  for  dinner;  suppose  from  its 
size,  the  thickness  of  the  skin  and  other  vener- 
able appearances  it  must  have  been  one  of  the 
first  settlers  of  Vermont;  made  a  slight  im- 
pression on  the  patriarch's  breast.  Supper  — 
cold  gander  and  potatoes.  Family  consists  of 
the  man,  good  wife,  daughter  Peggy,  four  boys, 
Pompey  the  dog,  and  a  brace  of  cats.  Fire 
built  in  the  square  room  about  nine  o'clock, 
and  a  pile  of  wood  lay  by  the  fireplace;  saw 
Peggy  scratch  her  fingers,  and  couldn't  take 
the  hint;  felt  squeamish  about  the  stomach, 
and  talked  of  going  to  bed;  Peggy  looked  sullen, 
and  put  out  the  fire  in  the  square  room;  went 


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42  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

to  bed  and  dreamed  of  having  eaten  a  quantity 
of  stone  wall. 

"  Tuesday.  Cold  gander  for  breakfast,  swamp 
tea  and  nut  cake  —  the  latter  some  consolation. 
Dinner — the  legs,  etc.,  of  the  gander,  done  up 
warm  —  one  nearly  despatched.  Supper  —  the 
other  leg,  etc.,  cold;  went  to  bed  as  Peggy  was 
carrying  in  the  fire  to  the  square  room;  dreamed 
I  was  a  mud  turtle,  and  got  on  my  back  and 
couldn't  get  over  again. 

"  Wednesday.  Cold  gander  for  breakfast; 
complained  of  sickness  and  could  eat  nothing. 
Dinner  —  the  wings,  etc.,  of  the  gander  warmed 
up;  did  my  best  to  destroy  them  for  fear  they 
should  be  left  for  supper;  did  not  succeed; 
dreaded  supper  all  the  afternoon.  Supper  — 
hot  Johnny  cake;  felt  greatly  relieved;  thought 
I  had  got  clear  of  the  gander  and  went  to  bed 
for  a  good  night's  rest;  disappointed;  very  cool 
night  and  couldn't  keep  warm;  got  up  and 
stopped  the  broken  window  with  my  coat  and 
vest;  no  use;  froze  the  tip  of  my  nose  and  one 
ear  before  morning. 

"Thursday.  Cold  gander  again;  much  dis- 
couraged to  see  the  gander  not  half  gone;  went 
visiting  for  dinner  and  supper;  slept  abroad 
and  had  pleasant  dreams. 

"  Friday.  Breakfast  abroad.  Dinner  at  Mr. 
B*s;  cold  gander  and  potatoes  —  the  latter 
very  good;  ate  them,  and  went  to  school  quite 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  43 

contented.  Supper  —  cold  gander  and  no  po- 
tatoes; bread  heavy  and  dry;  had  the  head- 
ache and  couldn't  eat.  Peggy  much  concerned, 
had  a  fire  built  in  the  square  room  and  thought 
she  and  I  had  better  sit  there  out  of  the  noise; 
went  to  bed  early;  Peggy  thought  too  much 
sleep  bad  for  the  headache. 

"  Saturday.  Cold  gander  and  hot  Johnny 
cake;  did  very  well.  Dinner  —  cold  gander 
again;  didn't  keep  school  this  afternoon;  got 
weighed  and  found  I  had  lost  six  pounds  the 
last  week;  grew  alarmed;  had  a  talk  with 
Mr.  B.  and  concluded  I  had  boarded  out  his 
share." 

Most  of  New  England's  great  men  "  boarded 
round  "  as  they  made  their  way  through  college, 
and  it  is  probably  not  too  much  to  say  that  the 
experience  was  of  great  service  to  them,  in  that 
it  helped  them  to  develop  breadth  of  sympathy, 
rugged  health  and  —  sometimes  —  a  sense  of 
humor.  Their  usual  accommodation  was  a 
tireless  bedroom,  and,  after  the  bracing  walk  to 
school,  they  were  confronted  with  the  problem 
of  coaxing  a  cheerful  fire  out  of  wood  which 
had  no  intention  of  burning.  Often  the  morn- 
ing would  be  half  gone  before  the  room  was 
sufficiently  warm  to  admit  of  book-work  of  any 
kind;  and  during  all  this  trying,  thawing-out 
period,  some  kind  of  order  had  to  be  maintained 
among  a  group  of  young  savages  whose  chief 


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44  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

object  in  life  it  was  to  make  their  teacher's  task 
a  burden.  Small  wonder  that  the  rod,  the 
dunce-cap,  and  other  means  of  discipline  even 
more  abhorrent  were  constantly  in  use.  What 
such  discipline  could  be  in  the  case  of  a  particu- 
larly brutal  master  we  may  imagine  from  the 
fact  that  in  Sunderland,  Massachusetts,  a 
whipping-post  was  set  firmly  into  the  floor  of  a 
school  erected  in  1793,  and  offenders  were  com- 
monly tied  there  and  whipped  in  the  presence 
of  their  mates.  Clifton  Johnson,  in  his  illumi- 
nating work  on  "  Old-time  Schools  and  School- 
books",  adds  that  the  walls  of  this  particular 
schoolroom  became  badly  marred,  as  time  went 
on,  with  dents  made  by  ferules  hurled  by  the 
teacher  at  the  heads  of  misbehaving  pupils. 

Even  in  the  private  schools  of  Western  Mas- 
sachusetts there  appears  to  have  been  no  sug- 
gestion of  the  primrose  path  about  the  road  to 
learning.  Deerfield  Academy,  which  began  its 
career  in  1799,  had  a  code  of  by-laws  containing 
no  less  than  thirty-six  articles  for  the  disciplin- 
ing of  its  pupils!  Morning  prayers  were  held 
at  five  o'clock  or  as  soon  as  it  was  light  enough 
to  read,  and  there  was  a  fine  of  four  cents  for 
being  absent  from  them  and  of  two  cents  for 
being  late.  For  making  an  ink-blot  or  dropping 
tallow  on  a  library  book,  sis  cents  had  to  be 
paid  to  the  school.  Any  encounter  of  the  boy 
and  girl  students  on  the  grounds  or  within  the 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  45 

walls  of  the  Academy,  except  at  meals  or  prayers, 
cost  one  dollar;  absence  from  meeting  on  Sun- 
day, Fast  Day,  or  Thanksgiving  cost  another 
dollar,  and  there  were  similarly  prohibitive 
fines  for  visiting  Saturday  night  or  Sunday  and 
for  playing  cards,  backgammon,  or  checkers 
within  the  walls  of  the  building. 

The  very  fact,  however,  that  learning  in  these 
old  days  was  so  difficult,  so  painful,  and  so  ex- 
pensive naturally  made  it  the  more  highly 
prized.  Those  who  had  passed  through  the 
little  red  schoolhouse,  the  grammar  school,  and 
the  Academy  felt,  quite  properly,  that,  on  the 
principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  they  were 
deserving  of  a  good  deal  of  credit.  Seldom 
could  it  be  said  of  them  that  they  wore  "  their 
weight 

"  of  learning,  lightly,  like  a  flower." 

Happily,  the  college  life  served  to  restore  such 
lads  to  the  plane  of  mere  human  beings.  Even 
Cotton  Mather,  as  we  shall  see,  was  not  quite 
so  unconscionable  a  prig  when  he  came  out  of 
Harvard  as  when  he  went  in. 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


CHAPTER  H 

GOING   TO  COLLEGE 

THE  spirit  that  founded  the  common 
schools  of  New  England  and,  by  1649, 
made  education  compulsory  throughout 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  established  a 
university  in  Cambridge  in  1636,  when  the  colony 
of  Massachusetts  was  scarcely  seven  years  old, 
and  in  the  year  1700  took  the  first  steps  towards 
founding  Yale  College  in  Connecticut.  Brown 
in  Rhode  Island  was  begun  in  1765,  and  five 
years  later  Dartmouth  began  its  career  amid 
the  wilds  of  New  Hampshire  with  a  humble 
log  house  for  its  first  college  hall  and  Indians 
enrolled  among  its  first  students.  Williams 
College  was  incorporated  in  the  year  1785; 
Bowdoin  came  into  existence  in  1794;  and  in 
1800  the  college  at  Middlebury,  Vt.,1  was  born. 
Thus,  by  the  dawn  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
at  least  one  institution  of  collegiate  rank  was 
provided  for  each  New  England  State.  How 
these    early    colleges    differed    each    from    the 

i  1791,  has  also  had 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  47 

other,  and  the  life  led  by  their  several  students 
is  matter  well  worth  our  attention. 

In  the  initial  volume  of  the  Massachusetts 
Records  we  find,  concerning  New  England's 
first  college: 

"  At  a  Court  holden  Sept.  8,  1636  and  con- 
tinued by  adjournment  to  the  28th  of  the  8th 
month,  October,  1636,  the  Court  agreed  to 
give  £400  towards  a  school  or  college:  £200  to 
be  paid  next  year  and  £200  when  the  work  is 
finished,  and  the  next  Court  to  appoint  where 
and  what  building." 

This  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  occasion 
in  history  when  a  community,  through  its 
representatives,  voted  a  sum  of  money  to  es- 
tablish an  institution  of  learning.  Twelve  of 
the  principal  magistrates  and  ministers  of  the 
colony,  among  them  Governor  Winthrop  and 
Deputy-Governor  Dudley,  were  apppointed  at 
this  same  time  to  carry  through  the  project. 
But  except  that  they  selected  Newtowne,  "  a 
place  very  pleasant  and  accommodate  ",  to  be 
the  site  of  the  college,  these  good  men  did 
little  during  the  next  two  years  to  assure  suc- 
cess to  their  undertaking.  It  was  the  bequest 
of  the  Reverend  John  Harvard,  a  graduate,  as 
were  many  of  the  other  leading  men  of  the 
colony,  of  the  old  English  university  at  Cam- 
bridge, which  put  the  struggling  institution 
on  its  feet. 


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48  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

Of  this  gentle  and  generous  scholar,  who 
died  of  consumption  the  year  after  he  had  set- 
tled on  our  bleak  New  England  shores,  very 
little,  except  his  college  history,  is  actually 
known  even  to-day,  when  a  fine  old  house  with 
which  his  early  life  is  said  to  be  associated1 
shares,  with  Shakespeare's  birthplace  and  the 
home  of  Marie  Corelli,  the  devout  attention 
of  American  pilgrims  to  Stratford-on-Avon. 
That  he  was  admitted  a  townsman  in  Charles- 
town,  August  6,  1637;  that  he,  with  Anna, 
his  wife,  was  received  into  the  communion  of 
the  church  over  which  Reverend  Mr.  Symmes 
presided  and  to  which  he  had  been  appointed 
temporary  assistant;  that  he  served  on  a  few 
town  committees,  and  that  he  died  in  Charles- 
town,  September  14,  1638,  leaving  half  his  es- 
tate and  his  whole  library  to  the  new  college  — 
this  is  the  sum  of  John  Harvard's  biography. 
Where  he  was  buried  no  man  knows  with  cer- 
tainty, though  it  is  believed  he  found  his  last 
resting-place  at  the  foot  of  the  Town  Hill  in 
Charlestown;  the  spot  on  which  the  alumni 
of  the  college  erected  a  monument  to  him  Sep- 
tember 26,  1828,  was  arbitrarily  chosen  be- 
cause it  then  commanded  a  view  of  the  site  of 
the  college. 

Books  often  endure  for  many  centuries,  and 

a  The  Harvard  Graduate*' 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  49 

out  of  John  Harvard's  library  of  three  hundred 
and  twenty  volumes  there  should  have  been 
many  a  tome  which  would  have  tangibly  con- 
nected this  young  graduate  of  Emmanuel  Col- 
lege with  the  college  in  the  newer  Cambridge, 
which  in  March,  1639,  voted  to  adopt  his  name 
—  having  already  given  its  own  to  the  town 
in  which  it  had  settled.  Yet  because  of  a  de- 
structive fire  in  1764,  only  one  book  of  Harvard's 
goodly  collection  survives  to-day.  This  is 
Downame's  "  Christian  Warfare  Against  the 
Devil,  World,  and  Flesh."  Harvard's  money, 
however,  seven  hundred  and  seventy-nine 
pounds,  seventeen  shillings  and  twopence,  was 
of  enormous  importance  in  building  up  the 
struggling  institution,  not  only  because  eight 
hundred  pounds  represented  as  much  as  thirty 
thousand  dollars  would  now,  but  also  because 
this  unexpected  and  munificent  bequest  stimu- 
lated the  colonists  generally  into  giving  what 
they  could.  Very  touching  is  it  to  read  of  simple 
folk  who  gave  a  flock  of  sheep,  cotton  cloth 
worth  nine  shillings,  a  pewter  flagon  worth  ten 
shillings,  a  fruit  dish,  a  sugar  spoon,  one  "  great 
salt  "  and  one  small  "  trencher-salt  "  towards 
the  upbuilding  of  this  institution  to  "  advance 
learning  and  perpetuate  it  to  posterity.** 

In  the  instrument  first  chosen  to  accomplish 
this  high  end,  the  Reverend  Nathaniel  Eaton, 
Harvard's  first  executive,   the  General  Court 


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60  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

was  very  unfortunate,  Eaton  and  his  wife  turn- 
ing out  to  be  rogues  and  cheats  of  the  com- 
monest garden  variety.  Happily,  the  people 
at  large  were  not  discouraged  by  the  fact  that 
a  mistake  had  been  made.  They  continued  to 
bestow  generous  gifts  ou  the  institution,  and  in 
1640  the  General  Court  granted  to  the  college 
the  revenue  of  the  ferry  between  Charlestown 
and  Boston,  which  came  to  about  sixty  pounds 
a  year.  And  then,  in  August,  1640,  the  Reverend 
Henry  Dunster,  who  had  recently  arrived  from 
England,  was  elected  president  under  that  title. 
From  Dunster,  its  first  president,  Harvard 
took  the  tone  which  has  made  it  famous.  Wen- 
dell Phillips,  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  of 
1881,  pointed  out  that  "the  generation  that 
knew  Vane  gave  to  our  Alma  Mater  for  a  seal 
the  simple  pledge,  Veritas."  Dunster  was  of 
the  generation  that  knew  Vane.  And  he  sacri- 
ficed his  all  for  Truth  as  he  saw  it. 

Very  appealing  is  the  story  of  this  simple, 
straightforward  man,  who,  after  giving  fourteen 
years  of  unselfish  and  devoted  service  to  the 
college,  sent  himself  into  exile  because  over- 
taken with  doubts  as  to  the  validity  of  infant 
baptism.  Dunster  had  come  from  Lancashire, 
at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  to  escape  persecution 
for  non-conformity.  For  some  time  he  seemed 
happy  in  the  New  World  and  devoted  all  the 
strength  that  was  in  him  to  the  upbuilding  of 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  51 

the  college  under  his  charge,  giving  it,  out  of 
his  very  limited  resources,  one  hundred  acres 
of  land  and  contributing  largely  towards  build- 
ing "  a  house  for  the  president."  He  also 
secured  a  number  of  appropriations  and  im- 
provements from  the  General  Court;  and  this 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  salary  diminished 
steadily  from  sixty  pounds  a  year  to  half  that 
sum.  He  even  expressed  himself  as  willing, 
noble  soul  that  he  was,  "  to  descend  to  the  low- 
est step,  if  there  can  be  nothing  comfortably  al- 
lowed." All  this  self-sacrificing  service  counted 
for  nothing,  however,  when  he  "  fell  into 
the  briers  of  Antipsedobaptism ",  as  Cotton 
Mather  termed  it.  The  General  Court  then 
gave  only  a  cold  ear  to  the  "  Considerations  " 
which  he  submitted  to  them  in  October,  1634, 
in  the  hope  that  he  might  be  permitted  to  re- 
main a  little  longer  in  "  the  president's  house  ", 
which  he  had  helped  to  build.  I  am  never  quite 
so  certain  that  the  Puritans  were  a  hard-hearted 
lot  as  when  I  recall  the  meagreness  of  their  re- 
sponse to  these  pathetic  pleadings: 

"  1.  The  time  of  the  year  is  unseasonable, 
being  now  very  near  the  shortest  day  and  the 
depth  of  winter. 

"  2.  The  place  unto  which  I  go  is  unknown 
to  me  and  my  family,  and  the  ways  and  means 
of  subsistence  to  one  of  my  talents  and  parts, 
or  for  the  containing  or  conserving  of  my  goods, 


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52  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

or  disposing  of  my  cattle,  accustomed  to  my 
place  of  residence. 

"  8.  The  place  from  which  I  go  hath  fire, 
fuel  and  all  provisions  for  man  and  beast  laid 
in  for  the  winter.  To  remove  some  things  will 
be  to  destroy  them;  to  remove  others,  as  books 
and  household  goods,  to  damage  them  greatly. 
The  house  I  have  builded,  upon  very  damageful 
conditions  to  myself,  out  of  love  for  the  college, 
taking  country  pay  in  lieu  of  bills  of  exchange 
on  England,  or  the  house  would  not  have  been 
built.  .  .  . 

"  4.  The  persons,  all  besides  myself,  are 
women  and  children,  on  whom  little  help,  now 
their  minds  lie  under  the  actual  stroke  of  afflic- 
tion and  grief.  My  wife  is  sick  and  my  young- 
est child  extremely  so  and  hath  been  for  months, 
so  that  we  dare  not  carry  him  out  of  doors, 
yet  much  worse  now  than  before." 

None  the  less,  March,  which  is  only  slightly 
more  advantageous  as  a  moving-time  than 
November,  was  the  limit  of  the  time  the  Court 
would  allow  him  to  stay  in  the  house  he  had 
builded,  and  in  that  month  of  sharp  winds  and 
icy  chill  the  deposed  president  went  to  take 
charge  of  a  church  in  Scituate.  Four  years 
later  he  died  in  poverty. 

It  was  under  Dunster  that  Harvard,  in  1642, 
graduated  its  first  class,  consisting  of  nine 
members,    most    of   whom    became    ministers. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  53 

The  ministry  was,  for  many  years,  indeed,  the 
profession  to  which  the  college  chiefly  dedicated 
its  graduates.  In  these  early  days  of  the  in- 
stitution, there  were  no  lay-instructors  to  turn 
the  students'  attention  to  any  other  profession, 
the  president,  who  was  always  a  minister,  being 
assisted  only  by  two  or  three  graduate  students 
(who  were  called  Sir)  in  doing  the  necessary 
teaching.  For  though  the  entrance  require- 
ments sound  very  formidable  in  the  matter  of 
Latin  and  Greek,  the  college  course  was  in 
many  ways  very  elementary,  and  the  students 
were  all  mere  lads  —  almost  children. 

When  Paul  Dudley  was  ready  to  enter  Har- 
vard, at  the  age  of  eleven  (in  1686),  his  father 
addressed  the  following  quaint  note  of  intro- 
duction to  the  president: 

"  I  have  humbly  to  offer  you  a  little,  sober, 
and  well-disposed  son,  who,  tho'  very  young, 
if  he  may  have  the  favour  of  admittance,  I  hope 
his  learning  may  be  tollerable:  and  for  him  I 
will  promise  that  by  your  care  and  my  care, 
his  own  Industry  and  the  blessing  of  God,  this 
mother  the  University  shall  not  be  ashamed 
to  allow  him  the  place  of  a  son  —  Appoint  a 
time  when  he  may  be  examined." 

The  president  who  examined  little  Paul  Dud- 
ley was  Increase  Mather,  father  of  Cotton 
Mather,  under  whose  administration  much  that 
is  of  interest  to  Harvard  and  to  social  life  in  old 


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64  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

New  England  transpired.  Chauncey,  Hoar,  and 
Oakes  were  successively  presidents  of  Harvard 
between  Dunster's  departure  and  the  accession 
of  Mather. 

Samuel  Sewall  entered  college  during  the  in- 
cumbency of  Chauncey.  It  has  always  seemed 
to  me  a  very  great  pity  that  Sewall,  who 
afterwards  wrote  so  much  and  so  vividly, 
passed  with  exceeding  lightness  over  his  col- 
lege days.  "  I  was  admitted,"  he  records,  "  by 
the  very  learned  and  pious  Mr.  Charles  Chaun- 
cey, who  gave  me  my  first  degree  in  the  year 
1671.  There  were  no  Masters  in  that  year. 
These  Bachelours  were  the  last  Mr.  Chauncey 
gave  a  degree  to,  for  he  died  the  February  fol- 
lowing. .  .  In  1674  I  took  my  2d  Degree  and 
Mrs.  Hannah  Hull  was  invited  by  the  Dr. 
Hoar  and  his  Lady  to  be  with  them  a  while  at 
Cambridge.  She  saw  me  when  I  took  my  De- 
gree and  set  her  affection  on  me,  though  I  knew 
nothing  of  it  till  after  our  Marriage;  which 
was  February  28th,  1675-6." 

Since  Sewall  was  nearly  seventy  when  he 
set  down  these  meagre  facts  in  a  letter  to  his 
son,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  events 
of  his  college  days  had  grown  dim  in  his  mem- 
ory. Yet  his  contemporary  account  of  events 
while  a  Resident  Fellow,  are  scarcely  more 
illuminating.  We  would  gladly  have  taken  it 
for  granted  that  he  had  his  hair  cut  if  only  he 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  55 

had  described  for  us  the  way  in  which  the  boys 
under  his  charge  lived  and  played  and  studied! 
The  embryo  Justice  had  a  keen  eye  even  thus 
early,  however,  for  the  administering  of  punish- 
ments. He  dwells  with  unction  on  the  disci- 
plining of  Thomas  Sargeant  who,  "  convicted  of 
speaking  blasphemous  words  concerning  the 
H.  G."  was  condemned 

"  1.  To  be  publickly  whipped  before  all  the 
Scholars. 

"  2.  That  he  should  be  suspended  as  to 
taking  his  degree  of  Bachelour. 

"  3.  Sit  alone  by  himself  in  the  Hall  un- 
covered at  meals,  during  the  pleasure  of  the 
President  and  Fellows,  and  be  in  all  things 
obedient,  doing  what  exercise  was  appointed 
him  by  the  President,  or  else  be  finally  expelled 
the  Colledge. 

"  The  first  was  presently  put  in  Execution 
in  the  Library  before  the  Scholars.  He  kneeled 
down  and  the  instrument,  Goodman  Hely,  at- 
tended the  President's  word  as  to  the  per- 
formance of  his  part  in  the  work.  Prayer  was 
had  before  and  after  by  the  President,  July  1, 
1674." 

The  most  vivid  picture  that  I  have  been 
able  to  find  of  the  college  at  this  period  is  un- 
fortunately a  prejudiced  one.  Visiting  Jesuits 
could  scarcely  be  expected  to  see  through  rose- 
colored   glasses  a  college  whose  main  purpose 


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66  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

they  knew  to  be  the  training  of  Puritans  lor  the 
priesthood.  So  these  "  impressions  "  of  Jasper 
Dankers  and  Peter  Sluyter  must  be  taken  with 
several  grains  of  salt.  The  time  of  their  visit 
was  June,  1680,  and  on  entering  the  College 
building  they  discovered  "  eight  or  ten  young 
fellows  sitting  about  smoking  tobacco,  with 
the  smoke  of  which  the  room  was  so  full  that 
you  could  hardly  see;  and  the  whole  house 
smelt  so  strong  of  it  that  when  I  was  going  up- 
stairs I  said,  this  is  certainly  a  tavern. .  . .  They 
could  hardly  speak  a  word  of  Latin  so  that  my 
comrade  could  not  converse  with  them.  They 
took  us  to  the  library  where  there  was  nothing 
particular.    We  looked  over  it  a  little." 

Inasmuch  as  there  had  long  been  a  stringent 
rule  against  the  use  of  tobacco  by  undergrad- 
uates, "  unless  permitted  by  the  president, 
with  the  consent  of  their  parents  or  guardians, 
and  on  good  reason  first  given  by  a  physician, 
and  then  in  a  sober  and  private  manner  ",  these 
visitors  must  have  mistaken  a  group  of  Fellows 
for  students  of  the  college.  Fellows  could  and 
did  both  smoke  and  drink.  Samuel  Sewall 
very  frankly  writes  down  in  his  diary  that  on 
April  15,  1674,  he  spent  fourpence  for  beer, 
threepence  for  wine  and  threepence  more  for 
"  Tobacco  Pipes." 

In  1685  the  Reverend  Increase  Mather  be- 
came president  of  the  college,  taking  the  place 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  67 

with  the  distinct  understanding  that  he  should 
not  be  expected  to  reside  at  Cambridge  and 
would  be  permitted  to  continue  his  work  as 
pastor  of  the  Second  Church  in  Boston.  Mather 
never  particularly  enjoyed  his  duties  at  Har- 
vard, and  there  was  constant  bickering  during 
his  tenure  of  office  because  he  could  not  very 
well  expound  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  to 
the  students  twice  daily  while  living  in  Boston. 
In  1698,  when  the  liberal  salary  for  those  times 
of  two  hundred  pounds  annually  was  voted  to 
him  as  president,  a  committee  of  which  Samuel 
Sewall  was  a  member  informed  him  in  no  mis- 
takable  manner  that  he  must  now  either  move 
to  Cambridge  or  resign;  but  he  still  refused  to 
do  either.  Not  until  his  salary  had  been  pushed 
up  another  twenty  pounds  did  he  take  up  his 
residence  across  the  river.  And,  in  a  few  months, 
he  was  back  again  in  Boston,  telling  Governor 
Stoughton  that  he  did  not  care  to  waste  him- 
self in  preaching  to  "  forty  or  fifty  children, 
few  of  them  capable  of  edification  by  such  ex- 
ercises "  and  alleging,  also,  that  living  in  Cam- 
bridge did  not  suit  his  health. 

The  fact  was  that  Boston,  with  its  political 
activities  and  theological  controversies,  was 
dearer  to  Mather  than  the  education  of  youth 
could  ever  be,  and  when  he  found  that  he  must 
either  reside  or  resign,  he  reluctantly  took  the 
latter  course.    Mr.  Samuel  Willard,  who  prom- 


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68  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

ised  to  stay  at  the  college  two  days  and  nights 
a  week,  was,  on  September  6,  1701,  appointed 
in  his  stead  by  the  General  Court  Council,  of 
which  Sewall  was  a  member. 

Sewall  was  held  accountable  for  this  vote 
by  the  Mathers  and  was  made  to  suffer  se- 
verely for  his  sin,  Cotton  Mather  telling  him 
in  public  that  he  had  treated  his  father  "  worse 
than  a  neger."  When  Cotton  Mather  himself 
wanted  the  appointment,  after  the  death  of 
Willard  in  1707,  Sewall,  as  will  be  readily  un- 
derstood, was  not  at  all  inclined  to  work  for 
him.  Instead  he  used  his  influence  that  John 
Leverett  should  get  the  place. 

Leverett  had  been  the  right-hand  man  of 
Governor  Joseph  Dudley,  and  it  was  a  very 
happy  moment  for  Dudley,  as  well  as  for  Sewall, 
when  his  friend  was  inaugurated.  "  The 
gov'r  ",  Sewall  writes,  "  prepared  a  Latin  speech 
for  instalment  of  the  president.  Then  took 
the  president  by  the  hand  and  led  him  down 
into  the  hall.  .  .  .  The  gov'r  sat  with  his  back 
against  a  noble  6re.  .  .  .  Then  the  gov'r  read 
his  speech  and  moved  the  books  in  token  of 
their  delivery.  Then  president  made  a  short 
Latin  speech,  importing  the  difficulties  dis- 
couraging and  yet  he  did  accept:  Clos'd  with 
the  hymn  to  the  Trinity.  Had  a  very  good 
dinner  upon  8  or  4  tables.  .  .  .  Got  home  very 
well.    Laud  Deo." 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  59 

John  Leverett  was  a  layman  and  a  man  of 
liberal  views.  Under  his  administration,  Har- 
vard evolved  from  a  training  school  for  parsons 
to  a  college  where  a  liberal  education  could  be 
obtained.  The  number  of  tutors  was  increased 
to  accommodate  the  growing  body  of  under- 
graduates and  in  1720  "  a  fair  and  goodly  house 
of  brick,"  Massachusetts  Hall,  the  earliest  of 
the  present  college  buildings,  was  erected.  It 
was  during  Leverett's  administration  that  the 
first  catalogue  of  books  in  the  library  was 
printed;  the  list  shows  thirty-five  hundred 
volumes,  a  very  large  proportion  of  which  were 
theological  works.  Bacon,  Chaucer,  Shakes- 
peare, and  Milton  are  in  this  catalogue;  but 
not  Dryden,  Addison,  Pope,  Swift,  and  a  num- 
ber of  other  writers  now  regarded  as  classics, 
whom  we  might  expect  to  find  there. 

Upon  the  death  of  Leverett  in  1724,  the 
Reverend  Benjamin  Wadsworth  came  to  be 
president.  He  served  for  thirteen  years,  a 
period  to  be  noted  chiefly  for  the  reaction  that 
then  took  place  from  the  over-strict  Puritanism 
of  earlier  times.  This  reaction  went  so  far, 
indeed,  that  the  college  attempted  to  stem  it 
by  making  the  following  rules: 

"  All  the  scholars  shall,  at  sunset  in  the  eve- 
ning preceding  the  Lord's  Day,  retire  to  their 
chambers  and  not  unnecessarily  leave  them; 
and    all   disorders   on    said    evening   shall    be 


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60  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

punished  as  violations  of  the  Sabbath  are.  .  .  . 
And  whosoever  shall  profane  said  day  —  the 
Sabbath  —  by  unnecessary  business  or  visit- 
ing, walking  on  the  Common  or  in  the  streets 
or  fields  in  the  town  of  Cambridge,  or  by  any 
sort  of  diversion  before  sunset,  or  that  in  the 
evening  of  the  Lord's  Day  shall  behave  himself 
disorderly,  or  any  way  unbecoming  the  season, 
shall  be  fined  not  exceeding  ten  shillings. 

"  That  the  scholars  may  furnish  themselves 
with  useful  learning,  they  shall  keep  in  their 
respective  chambers  and  diligently  follow  their 
studies;  except  half  an  hour  at  breakfast;  at 
dinner  from  twelve  to  two;  and  after  evening 
prayers  till  nine  of  the  clock.  To  that  end  the 
Tutors  shall  frequently  visit  their  chambers 
after  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  and  at  other 
studying  times,  to  quicken  them  to  their  busi- 
ness." 

These  rules  would  seem  to  ensure  the  strictest 
propriety  of  behavior  on  the  part  of  the  stu- 
dents, but  from  George  Whitefield's  declara- 
tion that  the  young  men  at  Harvard  were  as 
dissipated  as  those  at  Oxford,  we  must  conclude 
that  they  did  not  so  work  out.  During  the 
presidency  of  Reverend  Edward  Holyoke  of 
Marblehead,  who  was  elected  in  1737  to  suc- 
ceed Wadsworth,  and  who  served  the  college 
for  more  than  thirty  years,  two  members  of 
the  government  had  to  be  dismissed  for  in- 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  61 

temperance  and,  to  cope  with  the  constantly 
growing  laxity  of  conduct,  an  elaborate  system 
of  fines  was  inaugurated.  A  few  of  these  col- 
lege laws  with  the  fines  attached  are  worth 
quoting:  "Neglecting  to  repeat  the  sermon, 
9d;  entertaining  persons  of  ill  character,  not 
exceeding  Is  6d;  profane  cursing,  not  exceeding 
3s  6d;  graduates  playing  cards,  not  exceeding 
5s;  undergraduates  playing  cards,  not  exceed- 
ing Is  6d;  lying,  not  exceeding  Is  6d;  opening 
door  by  pick-locks,  not  exceeding  5s;  drunken- 
ness, not  exceeding  Is  6d;  refusing  to  give  evi- 
dence, 3s;  sending  freshmen  in  studying  time, 
9d." 

This  last  fine  is  of  particular  interest  be- 
cause it  shows  that  the  government  of  Har- 
vard recognized  as  legitimate,  outside  of  "  study- 
ing time ",  the  "  Ancient  Custom "  which 
made  "fags"  of  the  freshmen.  A  freshman 
might  not  keep  his  hat  on  in  the  presence 
of  a  senior,  was  obliged  to  furnish  "  baits, 
balls  and  footballs,  for  the  use  of  the  other  stu- 
dents ",  could  not  refuse  to  do  any  errand  upon 
which  it  pleased  the  whim  of  a  senior  to  send 
him,  and  was  strictly  enjoined  to  open  his  door 
immediately,  upon  hearing  a  knock,  without 
first  inquiring  who  was  there.  Arthur  Stanwood 
Pier,  who  has  written  of  Harvard  and  its  his- 
tory,1 tells  us  that  the  class  of  1798  was  the  first 

1 "  The  Story  of  Harvard: "  Boston,  Little,  Brown,  and  Company, 


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62  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

freshman  class  to  be  emancipated  from  this 
condition  of  servitude  and  that  Judge  Story 
helped  to  bring  this  reform  about  by  making 
a  friend  of  the  freshman  who  had  been  his 
fag. 

Another  curious  custom  which  prevailed  at 
the  college  in  the  early  days  was  that  of  rank- 
ing the  students  according  to  the  social  po- 
sition of  their  parents.  One  form  of  punish- 
ment was  to  "  degrade  "  a  student  by  putting 
him  down  several  places  on  his  class  list.  To 
be  "  degraded  "  was  quite  a  blow,  for  the  reason 
that  the  higher  part  of  the  class  commonly  had 
the  best  chambers  in  the  college  assigned  to 
them  and  also  had  the  right  to  help  themselves 
first  at  table  in  commons.  Inasmuch  as  the 
food  was  none  too  good  at  best,  "  first  pick- 
ings "  were  probably  a  very  real  asset.  In  1746 
"  breakfast  was  two  sizings  of  bread  and  a  cue 
of  beer  while  evening  Commons  were  a  Pye." 
About  1760  most  of  the  students  breakfasted 
at  the  houses  where  they  lodged,  and  "  for 
dinner  had  of  rather  ordinary  quality,  a  suffi- 
ciency of  meat  of  some  kind,  either  baked  or 
boiled;  and  at  supper  we  had  either  a  pint  of 
milk  and  half  a  biscuit,  or  a  meat  pye  or  some 
other  kind.  We  were  allowed  at  dinner  a  cue 
of  beer,  which  was  a  half-pint,  and  a  sizing  of 
bread  —  ...  sufficient  for  one  dinner."  Each 
student  had  his  own  knife  and  fork,  which  he 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  63 

carried  to  table  with  him  and  cleansed  after- 
ward by  wiping  on  the  table-cloth. 

The  price  of  board  at  the  commons  in  the 
period  of  which  we  are  now  speaking  was  be- 
tween seven  and  eight  shillings  a  week.  "  The 
Buttery,"  to  which  there  is  frequent  allusion 
in  the  old  records,  was  an  important  adjunct 
of  the  commons,  for  there,  "  at  a  moderate 
advance  on  the  cost,  might  be  had  wines, 
liquors,  groceries,  stationery  and  in  general 
such  articles  as  it  was  proper  and  necessary  for 
them  to  have  occasionally."  In  the  light  of  the 
restricted  table  of  these  early  days,  it  is  easy 
to  see  why  "  The  Buttery  "  should  have  pros- 
pered greatly,  and  why  a  literary  club,  which 
was  founded  in  1795,  should  have  regaled  mem- 
bers at  its  Saturday  evening  sessions  with 
liberal  helpings  of  hasty  pudding  and  molasses. 

Life  at  Harvard  was  still  an  austerely  "  sim- 
ple life."  Professor  Sidney  Willard,  of  the  class 
of  1798,  tells  us  that  "  the  students  who  boarded 
in  Commons  were  obliged  to  go  to  the  kitchen 
door  with  their  bowls  or  pitchers  for  their  sup- 
pers, where  they  received  their  modicum  of 
milk  or  chocolate  in  their  vessel,  held  in  one 
hand,  and  their  piece  of  bread  in  the  other  and 
repaired  to  their  rooms  to  take  their  solitary 
repast." 

Nor  had  Harvard  changed  very  much  by 
the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century, 


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64  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

when  its  "  plant "  consisted  of  a  group  of  six 
buildings:  Harvard  Hall,  which  contained  the 
college  library  of  fifteen  thousand  volumes; 
Holden  Chapel;    and  the  four  dormitories, — 

Massachusetts,  Hollis,  Stoughton,  and  Hoi- 
worthy.  The  last-named  hall  was  built  in  1812 
from  funds  raised  by  a  lottery.  In  1814  Uni- 
versity Hall  was  completed,  with  four  dining 
halls  for  college  commons  on  the  ground  floor, 
two  kitchens  beneath,  six  lecture  rooms  on  the 
second  floor,  and  a  chapel  above.  The  faculty 
at  this  time  consisted  of  thirteen  professors, 
including  those  of  medicine  and  divinity;  four 
tutors,  of  whom  Edward  Everett  was  one; 
one  instructor  in  French,  and  another  in  rhetoric 
and  oratory. 

When  the  class  of  1817  entered  the  college, 
there  were  thirteen  resident  graduates  as  well 
as  three  hundred  and  one  undergraduates  to 
be  taught  by  this  staff.  Eighty-six  students 
were  in  this  freshman  class,  —  among  them 
George  Bancroft,  Caleb  Cushing,  Samuel  A. 
Eliot,  George  B.  Emerson,  Samuel  J.  May,  and 
Stephen  Salisbury.  Through  the  home  letters 
of  young  Salisbury,  which  are  now  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society, 
one  may  share  intimately  in  a  typical  Harvard 
career  of  this  period. 

Salisbury  had  prepared  for  college  at  Leices- 
ter Academy,  near  Worcester,  Massachusetts, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  65 

and  entered  college  in  1813,  when  only  fifteen 
years  old.  At  first  he  is  held  strictly  to  ac- 
count for  every  penny  he  spends,  not  because 
his  people  were  either  poor  or  parsimonious, 
but  because  he  was  a  mere  boy.  When  it  came 
to  the  time  of  his  Commencement  dinner,  as 
he  had  arrived  nearly  at  man's  estate,  he  was 
permitted  to  spend  like  a  man  and  a  gentleman. 
During  his  freshman  year,  however,  he  had  to 
account  to  his  father  for  as  small  a  matter  as 
six  cents  expended  on  a  football,  while  his 
mother  directs  him  to  skip  rope  in  his  room, 
if  he  feels  the  need  of  exercise  in  stormy  weather! 
Young  Salisbury's  Commencement  spread 
was  held  at  "  Mr  Hearsey's  in  Cambridge." 
The  agreement  and  bills  for  this  occasion  have 
been  preserved  and  are  interesting  enough  to 
be  quoted  In  full,  for  the  reason  that  they  show 
vividly  how  such  a  dinner  was  conducted  in 
1817  by  well-to-do  people  whose  son  was  being 
graduated  from  Harvard. 

AGREEMENT   WITH   JONATHAN   HEAR8ET 

FOR  AN   ENTERTAINMENT   AT   CAMBRIDGE   ON 

COMMENCEMENT  DAT 

Aug.  27,   1817 

Mr.  Hearsey  agrees  to  provide  dinner  for  100 
persons  at  $1.50,  —  that  is  the  course  of  meats  & 
that  of  puddings  tarts  &c,  —  to  be  abundant 
in  quantity  &  to  consist  of  all  the  variety,  that  can 


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66  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

be  obtained,  of  choicest  dishes,  —  Every  thing  to 
be  of  the  best  quality  of  its  kind. 

Mr.  Hearsey  will  provide  likewise  the  cakes  of 
all  sorts  &  all  other  confectionary  &  all  other  articles 
of  whatever  description  that  are  needed  to  make 
an  elegant  &  tasteful  &  good  dinner  in  all  respects. 
He  will  also  provide  fruit  of  every  variety  &  in 
abundance.  He  wilt  provide  especially  Oranges  & 
Ice  Creams.  For  all  of  which  he  is  to  be  paid  what- 
ever they  may  cost,  he  taking  all  due  pains  to  get 
them  at  the  lowest  prices  for  the  best  articles  of 
each  kind  —  &  engages  to  procure  the  very  best 
articles  and  no  others. 

He  will  provide  a  tent,  convenient  &  commodious 
for  dinner  party,  for  which  he  is  to  be  paid  in  ad- 
dition. 

He  will  provide  Waiters,  Cooks,  Glass  &  China 
Ware  of  all  sorts  St  in  abundance  for  a  genteel  dinner 
&  all  furniture  of  every  sort  &  kind  at  his  own  cost 
&  expence  &  risk  without  any  addition  to  the  above 
charge  of  $1.50  each. 

Mr.  Salisbury  to  provide  his  own  liquors,  except 
Bottled  Cider  which  is  to  be  provided  by  Mr.  Hear- 
sey as  a  part  of  the  two  first  courses.  Mr.  Hearsey 
is  to  take  charge  of  the  liquors  &  to  return  whatever 
may  remain  after  the  entertainment  is  finished. 

Mr.  Salisbury's  company  is  to  have  the  use  ex- 
clusively of  at  least  four  rooms  in  Mr.  Hearsey 's 
house  for  drawing  rooms. 

Mr.  Hearsey  engages  that  there  shall  be  nothing 
wanting  to  make  the  dinner  elegant  &  acceptable  in 
all  respects,  whether  expressed  or  not  in  this  paper. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  67 

The  excellent  Hearsey  received  $228.47  for 
fulfilling  acceptably  the  conditions  of  agree- 
ment as  here  laid  down.  In  addition  there  was 
a  bill  of  ninety-seven  dollars  for  cake  and  ice- 
cream, and  another  of  seventy-nine  dollars  for 
liquors.  Let  us  follow  some  of  the  items  in  the 
inventories.  We  will  see  that  many  luxuries 
cost  considerably  more  a  hundred  years  ago 
than  the  same  things  do  now.  Some,  on  the 
other  hand,  cost  much  less.  What  kind  of 
cigars  could  they  have  been  which  were  ob- 
tainable for  two  dollars  a  hundred? 

Mr.  Stephen  Salisbury  to  Jonathan  Hearsey,  Dr. 

1817    1    To  100  Dinners $150. 

V  "  20  Doz.  Lemmons 10. 

Aug.  27  J    "    10  lb  Almonds 5. 

"    1  Box  raisins 4.75 

"    100  Cigars 2 

"    12  lb  Figs 3 

"   Pears  &  Apples 2.25 

"   Plumbs  &  currants 1.25 

"    10  Mellons 5. 

"  .3  Doz.  Oranges 3.38 

"  2  lb  S.  Candles 1 

"    1  Loaf  Sugar 2.50 

"  two  kinds  cake 5. 

"  hire  of  8  fruit  baskets  of  Mr. 

Farnum 4 

"  Do  green  baze 4.38 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

To  Man    waggon    bringing    up 

Liquors $1.50 

"  keeping  5  Horses 2.50 

"  Do  2  Horses 1 

$208.51 

To  Lumber  for  the  Tent 23.54 

"   Labour  &  nails 14.90 

"  hire  of  4  Sails 4 

"  Man  horse  &  waggon  twice  to 
Boston  to  fetch  &  carry  the 

sails 4.50 

255.45 

to  ice 1 


256.45 

Deduct  amt  of  Bill  of  Tent  &c  returned         27.08 


$228.47 


Reed  Pay  in  full  Sep  2,  1817 

Jonathan  Hearset. 

The  ice-cream  served  in  quart  moulds  at  this 
dinner  cost  two  dollars  a  quart;  five  plum- 
cakes,  which  weighed  ten  pounds  each,  cost 
twenty-five  dollars  in  addition  to  twenty  dol- 
lars expended  on  their  ornamentation.  There 
were  five  pink  cakes,  too,  which  weighed  six 
pounds  each,  and  which,  duly  ornamented,  cost 
thirty-five  dollars.  The  liquors,  which,  as  has 
been  said,  consisted  of  Madeira  wine,  porter, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  69 

claret  wine,  port,  brandy,  and  "  Jamaica 
spirits"  came  to  seventy-nine  dollars.  And 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  bottled  cider,  besides. 

But  for  the  degree  and  diploma  of  the  young 
gentleman  in  whose  honor  all  these  things  were 
being  eaten  and  drunk,  Stephen  Salisbury, 
Senior,  paid  the  modest  sum  of  ten  dollars. 
Then,  as  now,  it  was  not  the  educational  side  of 
Harvard  which  cost  a  parent  dear. 

Not  long  after  young  Salisbury  was  gradu- 
ated from  Harvard,  the  governing  body  of  the 
college  began  to  be  called  the  "  Faculty  of  the 
University,"  students  were  given  a  wider  choice 
of  studies,  and  they  might  or  might  not  board 
at  the  commons  as  they  pleased.  This  liberal- 
izing tendency  was  due  to  Professor  George 
Ticknor,  a  graduate  of  Dartmouth,  who  had 
studied  for  some  years  in  Europe,  and  to  Presi- 
dent Kirkland.  When  President  Kirkland  re- 
signed, in  1821),  on  account  of  ill  health,  he 
was  succeeded  by  Josiah  Quincy,  who  had  been 
for  three  terms  mayor  of  Boston  and  whose 
chief  service  to  his  college  was  that  he  crushed 
out  the  riotous  and  rebellious  spirit  that  had  for 
so  long  been  a  part  of  Harvard  life.  Accord- 
ing to  Doctor  Andrew  P.  Peabody,  "outrages 
involving  not  only  destruction  of  property  but 
peril  of  life  —  as  for  instance,  the  blowing  up 
of  public  rooms  in  inhabited  buildings  —  were 
then  occurring  every  year."     After  the  great 


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70  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

Rebellion  of  1834  —  a  demonstration  in  the 
course  of  which  torpedoes  were  set  off  in  chapel 
—  all  the  sophomores  but  three  went  on  strike 
and  so  were  sent  home.  Quincy  was  burned  in 
effigy  by  the  juniors,  and  the  college  work 
practically  discontinued  throughout  the  spring. 
Then  rebellions  disappeared  from  Harvard 
for  all  time.  Very  likely  this  was  because  Har- 
vard boys  had  now  become  "  men." 

Before  taking  leave  of  this  long-ago  Harvard 
to  study  its  great  rival,  Yale,  let  us  enjoy  Doc- 
tor Peabody's  picturesque  account  of  student 
life  at  this  period,  a  time  when  the  college 
course  cost  only  about  two  hundred  dollars  a 
year,  and  the  long  vacation  came  in  winter 
in  order  that  poor  youths  could  eke  out  their 
income  by  teaching  country  schools. 

"  The  feather  bed  —  mattresses  not  having 
come  into  general  use  —  was  regarded  as  a 
valuable  chattel;  but  ten  dollars  would  have 
been  a  fair  auction  price  for  the  other  contents 
of  an  average  room,  which  were  a  pine  bed- 
stead, washstand,  table,  and  desk,  a  cheap 
rocking-chair  and  from  two  to  four  other  chairs 
of  the  plainest  fashion.  I  doubt  whether  any 
fellow  student  of  mine  owned  a  carpet.  .  .  .  Coal 
was  just  coming  into  use  and  hardly  found  its 
way  into  the  college.  The  students'  rooms  — 
several  of  the  recitation  rooms  as  well  —  were 
heated    by    open-wood    fires.      Almost    every 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  71 

room  had,  too,  its  trwumittenda,  a  cannon-ball 
supposed  to  have  been  derived  from  the  ar- 
senal, which  on  very  cold  days  was  heated  to  a  t 
red  heat  and  placed  as  calorific  radiant  on  a 
skillet  or  on  some  extemporized  metallic  stand; 
while  at  other  seasons  it  was  often  utiUzed  by 
being  rolled  downstairs  at  such  times  as  might 
most  nearly  bisect  a  proctor's  night-sleep. 
Friction  matches  —  according  to  Faraday  the 
most  useful  invention  of  our  age  —  were  not 
yet.  Coals  were  carefully  buried  in  ashes  over 
night  to  start  the  morning  fire;  while  in  summer 
the  evening  lamp  could  be  lighted  only  by  the 
awkward  and  often  baffling  process  of  striking 
fire  with  flint,  steel,  and  tinder  box. 

"  The  student's  life  was  hard.  Morning 
prayers  were  in  summer  at  six;  in  winter  about 
half  an  hour  before  sunrise  in  a  bitterly  cold 
chapel.  Thence  half  of  each  class  passed  into 
the  several  recitation  rooms  in  the  same  build- 
ing —  University  Hall  —  and  three  quarters  of 
an  hour  later  the  bell  rang  for  a  second  set  of 
recitations,  including  the  remaining  half  of  the 
students.  Then  came  breakfast,  which  in  the 
college  commons  consisted  solely  of  coffee, 
hot  rolls  and  butter,  except  when  the  members 
of  a  mess  had  succeeded  in  pinning  to  the 
nether  surface  of  the  table,  by  a  two-pronged 
fork,  some  slices  of  meat  from  the  previous 
day's  dinner.     Between  ten  and  twelve  every 


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72  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

student  attended  another  recitation  or  lecture. 
Dinner  was  at  half  past  twelve, —  a  meal  not 
_  deficient  in  quantity  but  by  no  means  appe- 
tizing to  those  who  had  come  from  neat  homes 
and  well-ordered  tables.  There  was  another 
recitation  in  the  afternoon,  except  on  Satur- 
day; then  evening  prayers  at  six,  or  in  winter 
at  early  twilight;  then  the  evening  meal,  plain 
as  the  breakfast,  with  tea  instead  of  coffee  and 
cold  bread  of  the  consistency  of  wool,  for  the 
hot  rolls.  After  tea  the  dormitories  rang  with 
song  and  merriment  till  the  study  bell,  at  eight 
in  winter,  at  nine  in  summer,  sounded  the  cur- 
few for  fun  and  frolic,  proclaiming  dead  silence 
throughout  the  college  premises. 

"  On  Sundays  all  were  required  to  be  in 
residence,  not  excepting  even  those  whose 
homes  were  in  Boston;  and  all  were  required  to 
attend  worship  twice  each  day  at  the  college 
chapel.  On  Saturday  alone  was  there  permis- 
sion to  leave  Cambridge,  absence  from  town 
at  any  other  time  being  a  punishable  offence. 
This  weekly  liberty  was  taken  by  almost  every 
member  of  the  college,  Boston  being  the  uni- 
versal resort;  though  seldom  otherwise  than 
on  foot,  the  only  public  conveyance  then  being 
a  two-horse  stage-coach,  which  ran  twice  a 
day." 

Saybrook,  Connecticut,  was  the  town  first 
chosen  to  be  the  site  of  what  is  to-day  Yale 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  73 

University.  Connecticut  had  been  bearing  its 
share  of  Harvard's  support  but,  alter  some  fifty 
years,  began  to  feel  the  need  of  a  collegiate 
school  of  its  own.  The  idea  took  definite  form 
at  a  meeting  of  Connecticut  pastors  in  Sep- 
tember, 1701,  as  a  result  of  which  each  one 
present  made  a  gift  of  books  to  the  proposed 
college.  The  infant  institution  thus  started 
was  presented  by  a  citizen  of  Saybrook  with 
the  use  of  a  house  and  lot.  And  this  plant  was 
quite  adequate  for  some  time,  inasmuch  as  the 
college,  during  the  first  six  months  of  its  life, 
consisted  of  a  president  and  a  single  student! 
In  fifteen  years  only  fifty-five  young  men  were 
graduated. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  competition  for  so 
liny  a  college  would  not  have  been  keen,  but 
according  to  the  entertaining  "  General  His- 
tory of  Connecticut,"  which  Reverend  Samuel 
Peters  published  in  1781,  there  was  as  much 
turmoil  over  the  final  home  of  this  little  in- 
stitution as  if  it  had  been  several  times  its 
modest  size.    He  says: 

"  A  vote  was  passed  at  Hartford,  to  remove 
the  College  to  Weathersfield;  and  another  at 
Newhaven,  that  it  should  be  removed  to  that 
town.  Hartford,  in  order  to  carry  its  vote  into 
execution,  prepared  teams,  boats,  and  a  mob, 
and  privately  set  off  for  Saybrook,  and  seized 
upon  the  College  apparatus,  library  and  stu- 


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74  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

dents,  and  carried  all  to  Weathersficld.  This 
redoubled  the  jealousy  of  the  saints  at  New- 
haven,  who  thereupon  determined  to  fulfil  their 
vote;  and  accordingly,  having  collected  a  mob 
sufficient  for  the  enterprise,  they  set  out  for 
Weathersfield,  where  they  seized  by  surprise 
the  students,  library,  &c,  &c.  But  on  the  road 
to  Newhaven,  they  were  overtaken  by  the 
Hartford  mob,  who,  however,  after  an  unhappy 
battle,  were  obliged  to  retire  with  only  a  part 
of  the  library  and  part  of  the  students.  The 
quarrel  increased  daily,  everybody  expecting 
a  war;  and  no  doubt  such  would  have  been  the 
case  had  not  the  peacemakers  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  interposed  with  their  usual  friend- 
ship, and  advised  their  dear  friends  of  Hart- 
ford to  give  up  the  College  to  Newhaven.  This 
was  accordingly  done  to  the  great  joy  of  the 
crafty  Massachusetts,  who  always  greedily 
seek  their  own  prosperity,  though  it  ruin  their 
best  neighbors.  The  College  being  thus  fixed 
forty  miles  further  west  from  Boston  than  it 
was  before  tended  greatly  to  the  interest  of 
Harvard  College;  for  Saybrook  and  Hartford 
out  of  pure  grief,  sent  their  sons  to  Harvard 
instead  of  to  the  College  at  Newhaven." 

This  account  of  Yale's  early  history  is  full 
of  obvious  exaggerations;  but  it  is  a  fact  that 
the  college  led  a  wandering  life  for  more  than 
seventeen  years,  and  that  the  rivalry  over  its 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  75 

site  was  far  from  friendly  at  the  last.  Scarcely 
had  the  college  chosen  a  habitation,  however, 
when  its  outlook  quite  changed.  For  now  there 
came  to  it  some  valuable  gifts,  which  deter- 
mined its  name  and  its  bent.  Elihu  Yale,  who 
gave  these  gifts,  had  appropriately  been  born 
in  New  Haven.  His  epitaph  in  the  churchyard 
at  Wrexham  in  Wales  is  often  quoted: 

"  Born  in  America,  in  Europe  bred, 
In  Afric  travelled  and  in  Asia  wed, 
Where  long  he  lived  and  thrived;    at  London 

dead. 
Much  Good,  some  111  he  did;  so  hope's  all  even, 
And  that  his  Soul  through  Mercy's  gone  to 

Heaven* " 

This  epitaph  differs  from  many  of  its  class 
in  being  really  autobiographic.  For,  though 
born  in  New  England,  Yale  had  been  educated 
abroad  and  had  made  a  fortune  and  a  career 
in  the  East  Indies.  At  the  time  he  sent  his 
first  gifts  to  Yale,  he  was  Governor  of  Fort  St. 
George,  now  Madras.  These  gifts  consisted  of 
a  large  box  of  books,  his  portrait  by  Sir  God- 
frey Kneller,  the  arms  of  King  George,  and 
£200  worth  of  English  goods.  The  portrait 
is  still  preserved  in  the  Art  Gallery,  but  the 
.coat  of  arms  was  destroyed  at  the  time  of  the 
Revolution.  From  a  contemporary  account 
we  learn  that,  after  receiving  these  gifts,  the 


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76  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

trustees  "  solemnly  named  "  the  new  building 
Yale  College.  "  Upon  which  the  Hon.  Col. 
Taylor  represented  Governor  Yale  in  a  speech 
expressing  his  great  satisfaction;  which  ended 
we  passed  to  the  Church  and  there  the  Com- 
mencement was  carried  on.  .  .  .  After  which 
were  graduated  ten  young  men,  whereupon  the 
Hon.  Gov.  Saltonstall  in  a  Latin  speech  con- 
gratulated the  Trustees  in  their  success  and  in 
the  comfortable  appearance  with  relation  to 
the  school.  All  which  ended,  the  gentlemen 
returned  to  the  college  hall,  where  they  were 
entertained  with  a  splendid  dinner,  and  the 
ladies  at  the  same  time  were  also  entertained 
in  the  Library.  After  which  they  sung  the 
first  four  verses  of  the  65th  Psalm,  and  so  the 
day  ended." 

The  course  of  study  pursued  at  old  Yale 
as  at  old  Harvard  was  based  on  the  ancient 
scholastic  curriculum  of  the  English  univer- 
sities, the  backbone  of  which  was  theology  and 
logic.  Though  not  specifically  designed,  as 
Harvard  had  been,  to  train  young  men  for  the 
ministry,  this  second  New  England  college 
kept  that  end  quite  distinctly  in  view,  and  as 
the  brethren  who  founded  the  college  were, 
their  successors  have  continued  to  be,  Congre- 
gational ministers  in  the  State  of  Connecticut. 
Of  the  one  hundred  and  ten  tutors  connected 
with  the  college  during  its  first  century,  only 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  77 

forty-nine  were  laymen;  and  the  president  of 
the  institution  has  always  been  a  clergyman, 
When  Timothy  Cutler,  chosen  in  1719  to  be 
head  of  the  college,  turned  Churchman  and 
began  to  draw  after  him  some  of  the  tutors  who 
had  become  interested  in  the  Episcopacy 
through  Bishop  Berkeley,  he  and  the  men  thus 
disaffected  were  excused  from  further  connection 
with  the  college.  But  there  was  no  ill-feeling 
about  this,  as  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  Berke- 
ley conveyed  to  the  trustees,  on  his  return  to 
England  in  1732,  his  farm  of  ninety-six  acres 
at  Whitehall,  the  income  of  which  was  to  be 
used  for  scholarships.  The  following  year  he 
sent  the  college  nearly  a  thousand  volumes, 
valued  at  five  hundred  pounds,  the  best  col- 
lection of  books  that,  up  to  that  time,  had  been 
brought  to  America. 

South  Middle  College,  built  in  1752  from 
money  which  was  raised  partly  by  a  lottery, 
was  modeled  on  "  red  Massachusetts  "  at  Cam- 
bridge. It  is  the  oldest  Yale  building  still 
standing.  In  and  out  of  its  ancient  doors, 
more  than  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  strolled 
students  in  caps  and  gowns  —  for  this  academic 
costume  was  worn  at  Yale  in  the  eighteenth 
century  —  as  well  as  tutors  in  frock  coats, 
cocked  hats,  and  perukes;  a  curious  "  View  of 
Yale  College",  made  in  1786,  preserves  these 
types  for  us.    Freshmen,  at  Yale  as  at  Harvard, 


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78 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


I 


were  treated  almost  like  the  fags  of  the  English 
public  schools  in  these  early  days.  From  a 
book  of  "  Freshman  Laws  "  the  following  rules 
have  been  extracted: 

"  The  Freshmen,  as  well  as  other  under- 
graduates, are  to  be  uncovered,  and  are  for- 
bidden to  wear  their  hats  (unless  in  stormy 
weather)  in  the  front  door-yard  of  the  Presi- 
dent's or  Professor's  house,  or  within  ten  rods 
of  the  person  of  the  President,  eight  rods  of 
the  Professor,  and  five  rods  of  a  tutor." 

"  A  Freshman  shall  not  play  with  any  mem- 
ber of  an  upper  class  without  being  asked." 

"  In  case  of  personal  insult  a  junior  may  call 
up  a  Freshman  and  reprehend  him.  A  Sopho- 
more, m  like  case,  must  obtain  leave  from  a 
Senior,  and  then  he  may  discipline  a  Fresh- 
man." 

"  Freshmen  shall  not  run  in  college-yard, 
or  up  or  down  stairs,  or  call  to  anyone  through 
a  college  window." 

Students  might  not  even  address  each  other 
in  the  English  language  at  the  Yale  of  these 
far-away  days,  but  had  to  talk  in  Latin!  One 
mode  of  punishment  was  for  the  president  to 
cuff  or  box  on  the  ear,  "  in  a  solemn  and  formal 
manner,  at  chapel  freshmen  and  commencing 
Sophomores  "  who  had  broken  one  or  another 
of  the  endless  rules  of  the  institution.  But 
there  was  no  bodily  flogging  such  as  that  at 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  79 

Harvard  which  Samuel  Sewall  describes  with 
such  unction.  And  some  of  the  punishments 
were  humorously  fitted  to  the  crime  in  the 
manner  advocated  by  Gilbert  and  Sullivan's 
Mikado.  Thus  a  student  who  had  been  dis- 
orderly from  too  much  drink,  or  had  been  late 
at  prayers,  was  sometimes  appointed  "  Butler's 
waiter  "  and  compelled  to  ring  the  chapel  bell 
for  a  week  or  two.  The  butler  here,  as  at  Har- 
vard, was  a  very  imposing  person,  a  licensed 
monopolist,  who  kept  his  buttery  in  a  con- 
venient apartment  of  South  Middle  and  dis- 
pensed to  such  as  had  money  or  credit  "  cider, 
metheglin,  and  strong  beer,  together  with  loaf 
sugar  ('  saccharum  rigidum')  pipes,  tobacco, 
etc.** 

During  the  Revolution,  the  college  was  all 
but  broken  up,  only  the  seniors,  under  Tutor 
Dwight,  staying  at  New  Haven.  No  public 
Commencement  was  held  between  1777  and 
1781,  and  the  salaries  of  the  college  officers  at 
this  time  and  when  the  war  closed  were  paid 
in  terms  of  beef,  pork,  wheat,  and  Indian 
corn. 

This  stringency  in  the  currency  helps  us  to 
understand  one  worthy  parson's  protest  over 
a  certain  student  entertainment  of  the  day. 
In  1788  the  "  Junior  Sophister  Class  "  gave  a 
theatrical  performance,  during  election  week, 
of  "  Tancred  and  Sigismunda,"  and  followed 


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80  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

it  with  a  farce  of  the  lads'  own  composing,  re- 
lating to  events  in  the  Revolutionary  War. 
From  the  students'  point  of  view,  the  occasion 
was  a  very  successful  one,  but  Reverend  An- 
drew Eliot  was  tremendously  shocked,  we 
learn,  by  the  language  of  some  of  the  charac- 
ters in  the  farce.  He  strongly  disapproved,  also, 
of  impersonation  of  women  by  young  men, 
which  the  exigencies  of  the  situation  made 
necessary.  "  Female  apparcll  and  ornaments," 
he  writes  in  obvious  horror,  "  were  put  on 
some,  contrary  to  an  express  statute,  Besides  it 
cost  the  lads  £60!  "  The  italics  are  ours;  they 
serve  to  suggest  the  climax  of  this  worthy 
gentleman's  indignation.  For,  revolting  as  it 
was  to  his  taste  to  see  college  boys  tricked  out 
as  women,  the  expenditure  by  Yale  students 
just  then  of  sixty  pounds  for  a  theatrical  per- 
formance was  an  offence  far  more  appalling. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  Yale  enjoyed 
the  single  literary  period  of  its  history.  John 
Trumbull,  Timothy  Dwight,  David  Humph- 
reys, and  Joel  Barlow,  Yale  men  all,  who  had 
aided  the  cause  of  Independence  with  sword 
as  well  as  with  pen,  together  with  three  Hart- 
ford wits,  contributors  to  The  American  Mer- 
cury, constituted  at  this  time  a  mutual  ad- 
miration society  which  was  generally  spoken 
of  as  "  The  Seven  Pleiades  of  Connecticut." 
The  poems  they  wrote  are  little  read  nowa- 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  81 

days,  but  they  are  historically  interesting  none 
the  less  —  particularly  Barlow's  ColumMad. 
And  John  Trumbull  and  Timothy  Dwight  are 
entitled  to  special  mention  here,  for  the  reason 
that  they  were  soon  made  tutors  of  the  college 
and  by  their  influence  served  to  broaden  the 
course  of  study  in  the  direction  of  the  humani- 
ties. 

Timothy  Dwight  was  the  president  of  Yale 
from  1795-1817,  succeeding  in  that  high  office 
Doctor  Ezra  Stiles,  who  had  served  from  1777 
and  was  widely  renowned  as  the  best  scholar  of 
his  time  in  New  England.  Dwight  is  less  famed 
as  a  writer  than  as  an  executive  officer,  but  his 
"  Travels  in  New  England  and  New  York " 
is  one  of  the  best  books  about  old  New  Eng- 
land extant  and  has  probably  made  him  known 
to  thousands  of  people  only  incidently  inter- 
ested in  his  relation  to  the  college.  Under  his 
administration,  the  first  of  Yale's  professional 
schools  —  that  for  the  study  of  medicine  —  was 
organized  in  1810  with  the  assistance  of  the 
State  Medical  Society,  while  under  his  successor, 
Jeremiah  Day,  who  served  the  college  from 
1817  to  1846,  the  Divinity  School  in  1822,  and 
the  Law  School  two  years  later,  began  their 
careers.  Thus  by  1825  Yale  was  really  a  uni- 
versity. 

Because  Yale  is  in  a  sense  a  daughter  of 
Harvard  —  her  founders,  early  presidents,  and 


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82  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

tutors  being  of  necessity  Harvard  men  —  some 
comparison  between  the  institutions  naturally 
suggests  itself.  Founded  under  similar  aus- 
pices and  for  similar  purposes,  the  two  colleges 
have  diverged  widely  in  spirit.  Cambridge 
came  to  be  known  as  the  source  of  most  of  what 
is  best  in  American  letters;  New  Haven  has 
never  claimed  any  such  distinction.  A  certain 
severity,  however,  has  always  marked  the 
training  given  at  Yale.  Thus,  the  aim  being 
to  fit  students  for  the  hard  realities  of  life, 
"  discipline  rather  than  culture,  power  rather 
than  grace,  '  light '  rather  than  '  sweetness  ' 
has  ever  been  .  .  .  the  result  of  her  teachings."  l 
The  third  college  to  be  started  in  New  England 
was  Brown,  which  has  just  been  celebrating 
its  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary.  This 
college  was  Baptist  in  its  origin  and  in  its  aims. 
It  owes  its  existence  to  the  very  natural  desire 
of  Roger  Williams's  followers  to  secure  for  their 
churches  educated  ministers  who  would  not 
have  to  undergo  the  restrictions  of  denomina- 
tional influence  and  sectarian  tests.  Just  as 
Roger  Williams's  principles  had  brought  him 
into  collision  with  the  ruling  powers  of  Massa- 
chusetts, so  the  principles  of  his  followers  were 
far  from  being  in  accord  with  those  in  charge  of 
the  higher  institutions  of  education  in  New 
England.    There  was  nothing  for  the  Baptists 

1  Henry  A.  Been  in  Scribner'i  Monthly  for  April,  1876. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  83 

to  do,  therefore,  but  to  start  a  college  of  their 
own. 

At  Hopewell  in  New  Jersey,  such  a  college 
or  seminary  had  already  been  inaugurated  (in 
1756),  by  the  Reverend  Isaac  Eaton  and  had 
attained  such  success  that  certain  zealous  Bap- 
tists determined  to  give  an  institution  of  the 
same  kind  to  the  settlement  which  Roger  Will- 
iams had  founded.  The  Reverend  James  Man- 
ning, a  graduate  of  the  Hopewell  Academy, 
was  entrusted  with  the  business  end  of  the 
undertaking,  and  in  the  summer  of  1763,  visited 
Newport  to  arrange  for  the  establishment  of 
his  college.  One  very  interesting  and  signifi- 
cant thing  about  the  charter  which  Doctor 
Manning  soon  obtained  was  that,  while  it  se- 
cured ample  privileges  to  the  Baptists  by 
several  clear  and  explicit  provisions,  it  recog- 
nized throughout  the  grand  Rhode  Island  prin- 
ciple of  civil  and  religious  freedom.  Thus, 
though  Brown  was  then  and  is  to-day  a  Bap- 
tist college,  its  governing  body  is  by  law  dis- 
tributed among  Friends,  Congregation alists, 
and  Episcopalians  as  well  as  Baptists.  Yet 
the  president  of  this  institution,  which  Man- 
ning succeeded  in  launching  in  1764,  "  must 
forever  be  of  the  denomination  called  Baptists." 

Though  Rhode  Island  had  been  selected  by 
the  projectors  of  this  college  as  the  home  of 
their  new  institution,  and  though  a  liberal  and 


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84  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

ample  charter  had  been  secured,  the  college 
was  still  without  funds,  without  students,  and 
without  any  definite  means  of  support.  Its 
executive  officer  must  obtain  his  income  from 
a  church  pastorate  until  such  time  as  the  col- 
lege should  become  a  "  going  concern."  For 
this  reason  it  was  that  the  College  of  Rhode 
Island  began  its  career  in  Warren,  ten  miles 
from  Providence,  where  Manning  proceeded 
to  discharge  the  duties  of  minister  as  well  as 
those  of  a  teacher.  At  the  second  annual  meet- 
ing of  the  corporation,  held  in  Newport,  Sep- 
tember 3,  1765,  this  resourceful  man  was 
formally  elected,  in  the  words  of  the  records, 
"  President  of  the  College,  Professor  of  Lan- 
guages and  other  branches  of  learning,  with 
full  power  to  act  in  these  capacities  at  Warren 
or  elsewhere."  On  that  same  day,  as  appears 
from  an  original  paper  now  on  file  in  the  ar- 
chives of  the  Brown  Library,  the  president 
matriculated  his  first  student,  William  Rogers, 
a  lad  of  fourteen,  the  son  of  Captain  William 
Rogers  of  Newport.  Not  only  was  this  lad 
the  first  student,  but  he  was  also  the  first 
freshman  class.  Indeed  for  a  period  of  nearly 
ten  months,  he  constituted  the  entire  student 
body! 

At  the  first  Commencement  of  the  college, 
held  in  the  meeting-house  at  Warren,  Septem- 
ber 7,  1769,  seven  students  took  their  Bache- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  85 

lor's  degree.  The  occasion  was  so  important 
that  there  was  then  and  there  inaugurated  the 
earliest  State  holiday  in  the  history  of  Rhode 
Island.  From  a  contemporary  account,  we 
learn  that  both  the  president  and  the  candi- 
dates for  degrees  showed  their  American  loy- 
alty on  this  day  by  wearing  clothing  of  Ameri- 
can manufacture.  We  are  glad  to  be  told,  also, 
that  all  present  "  behaved  with  great  de- 
corum." 

Thus  far  the  new  institution  possessed  abso- 
lutely no  college  edifices,  but  so  great  was  the 
interest  aroused  by  the  first  Commencement 
that  Providence  and  Newport  now  bestirred 
themselves  to  raise  subscriptions  which  would 
bring  the  infant  institution  to  their  respective 
settlement.  Providence  won  the  day  —  and 
the  college.  "  The  people  of  Newport  had 
raised ",  says  Manning  in  this  connection, 
"  four  thousand  pounds  lawful  money,  tak- 
ing in  their  unconditional  subscription.  But 
Providence  presented  four  thousand,  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty  pounds,  lawful  money  and 
advantages  superior  to  Newport  in  other  re- 
spects." On  May  14,  1770,  therefore,  the 
foundations  of  the  first  college  building,  Uni- 
versity Hall,  were  laid  in  Providence,  John 
Brown,  who  led  in  the  destruction  of  Gaspee, 
two  years  later,  placing  the  corner-stone.  The 
site  selected  was  on  the  crest  of  a  hill  which 


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86  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

had  formed  part  of  the  "  home  lot "  of  Chadd 
Brown,  associate  and  friend  of  Roger  Williams 
and  the  "  first  Baptist  Elder  in  Rhode  Island." 

Yet  the  college  was  not  yet  called  Brown,  this 
name  being  first  given  to  it  in  1804  in  honor 
of  Honorable  Nicholas  Brown,  who  had  been 
graduated  under  Manning  in  1786,  and  who 
in  1702  began  his  benefactions  by  presenting 
to  the  corporation  the  sum  of  five  hundred 
dollars,  to  be  expended  in  the  purchase  of  law 
books  for  the  library.  In  1804  he  gave  to  his 
college  the  then  unprecedented  sum  of  five 
thousand  dollars  as  a  foundation  for  a  profes- 
sorship of  oratory  and  belles  lettres.  When  he 
died  In  September,  1841,  the  entire  sum  of  his 
recorded  benefactions  was  estimated  at  one 
hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars. 

During  the  Revolution,  the  college  edifice 
on  its  lofty  hill  was  occupied  as  a  barracks  and 
afterwards  as  a  hospital  by  the  American  and 
French  forces.  When  the  war  was  over,  Presi- 
dent Manning  represented  Rhode  Island  in  the 
Congress  of  the  Federation.  Brown  may  thus 
quite  justly  lay  claim  to  intimate  participa- 
tion in  the  making  of  these  United  States. 
Manning  died  in  1791  and  was  succeeded  by 
Jonathan  Maxcy.  When  Doctor  Maxcy  re- 
signed the  presidency  in  1802,  Asa  Messer  took 
the  office.  To  him,  in  1896,  succeeded  the 
Reverend  Doctor  Francis  Wayland,  who  served 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  87 

until  1855.  During  these  various  changes  in 
administration,  the  college  had  been  steadily 
growing  in  the  number  of  its  buildings  and  in 
power.  At  the  time  when  Manning  was  strug- 
gling to  establish  the  college,  Reverend  Morgan 
Edwards  was  securing  subscriptions  abroad  for 
its  support;  and  never  has  Brown  lacked  both 
effective  friends  among  the  money-givers  and 
impressive  scholars  in  its  faculty. 

Picturesque  customs,  too,  and  a  very  gener- 
ous attitude  towards  "  town  "  as  well  as  "  gown  ", 
have  here  obtained  from  the  beginning.  The 
John  Brown  who  laid  the  corner-stone  of  the 
first  college  building  graciously  treated  the 
entire  assemblage  to  punch  after  his  labors 
were  over,  and  similar  hospitality,  though 
differently  expressed,  has  been  extended  by  the 
college  to  the  community  ever  since.  Com- 
mencement at  Brown  has  been  a  community 
holiday  from  the  earliest  days  of  the  college. 
An  "  old  citizen ",  writing  in  the  Providence 
Journal  of  July  2,  1851,  concerning  the  college 
about  1800,  has  said  that  "  everybody  had 
commencement  day.  It  was  the  season  when 
country  cousins  returned  all  the  calls  and  visits 
which  they  had  received  the  past  year.  '  You 
will  come  and  see  us  at  commencement '  was 
the  stereotyped  invitation.  And  sure  enough 
they  did  come.  The  principal  mode  of  con- 
veyance  was   the   square-top   chaise   and   the 


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88  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

visitors  would  begin  to  arrive  on  Monday.  On 
Tuesday  towards  sunset  every  avenue  to  the 
town  was  filled  with  them.  In  the  stable-yards 
of  the  '  Golden  Ball  Inn  ',  the  '  Montgomery 
Tavern  \  and  other  public  houses  on  Wednes- 
day morning,  you  could  see  hundreds  of  their 
chaises,  each  numbered  by  the  hostlers  on  the 
dashers  with  chalk  to  prevent  mistakes. 

"  The  literary  exercises  of  commencement 
season  began  on  Tuesday.  .  .  .  How  long  the 
twilight  of  Tuesday  used  to  appear.  For  the 
town  was  on  tiptoe  to  witness  the  illumination  of 
the  college  building  this  evening.  .  .  .  Scarcely 
is  the  sun  down  before  the  human  current  be- 
gins to  set  towards  the  hill  and  before  it  is 
fairly  dark  the  college  yard  is  filled  with  ladies 
and  gentlemen  of  all  ages  and  sizes.  Not  a 
light  is  to  be  seen  at  the  college  windows.  Anon 
the  college  bell  rings  and  eight  tallow  candles 
at  each  window  shed  their  rich  luxuriant  yellow 
light  on  the  crowd  below.  .  .  .  The  band  arrange 
themselves  on  the  front  steps  of  the  old  chapel, 
and  make  the  welkin  ring  again.  .  .  .  All  could 
not  '  go  to  college  \  all  could  not  talk  Latin  or 
make  almanacs,  but  all  could  see  an  illumination 
and  could  hear  music.  So  those  who  could  do 
no  more  were  fully  satisfied  with  the  college  for 
these  benefits  and  advantages." 

Commencement  itself  was  held  in  the  Old 
Baptist  Church,  erected  in  1775  with  this  very 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  89 

use  in  mind,  and  the  "  learned  faculty  "  were 
wont  to  occupy  the  stage  on  the  north  side  of 
the  pulpit,  while  the  graduating  class  sat  on 
the  south  side,  and  the  band  of  music  valiantly 
did  their  duty  in  the  west  gallery.  At  noon 
the  entire  company  marched  to  the  college  for 
dinner,  after  which  came  three  hours  more  of 
oratory  —  again  in  the  Old  Baptist.  When  the 
program  came  finally  to  an  end  and  degrees 
had  been  conferred,  the  procession  once  more 
proceeded  to  the  college  —  and  Commencement 
proper  was  at  an  end.  A  religious  meeting  at 
the  Old  Baptist  in  the  evening  brought  the 
day's  festivities  to  an  appropriate  close. 

The  friendly  relations  between  the  students 
and  the  community  at  Brown  is  very  likely 
due  to  the  fact  that  among  the  most  important 
of  the  early  rules  was  that  providing  "  that 
each  student  treat  the  inhabitants  of  the  town 
.  .  .  with  civility  and  good  manners."  It  was 
long  one  of  the  entrance  requirements  that 
every  student  transcribe  these  laws  and  cus- 
toms; the  resulting  copy  was  then  signed  by 
the  president  and  was  kept  in  the  student's 
possession,  while  an  undergraduate,  as  evi- 
dence of  his  admission.  Before  me,  as  I  write, 
is  a  copy  of  these  "  Laws  And  Customs  of 
Rhode  Island  College,  1774." 

College  rules  during  the  eighteenth  century 
are  all  a  good  deal  alike,  but  Rhode  Island  Col- 


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90  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

lege  showed  its  individuality  in  this  provision, 
at  least:  "  Such  as  regularly  and  statedly  keep 
the  seventh  day  as  the  Sabbath  are  exempted 
from  the  law  [requiring  church  attendance 
'on  the  First  Day  of  the  week  steadily 'I  and 
are  only  required  to  abstain  from  secular  con 
cerns  which  would  interrupt  their  fellow  stu- 
dents." Another  rule  which  would  be  found  at 
this  college  only  is:  "  That  no  student  wear 
his  hat  within  the  College  walls,  excepting  those 
who  steadily  attend  the  Friends'  Meeting." 
There  was,  too,  a  unique  provision  exempting 
"  young  gentlemen  of  the  Hebrew  nation  "  from 
the  rule  which  made  it  an  offence  to  deny  that 
the  New  Testament  was  of  divine  authority. 

Ample  provision  was  made  that  the  students 
at  this  institution  should  be  well  nourished. 
In  1773  these  orders  were  established  for  the 
regulation  of  the  commons: 

FOR  DINNER  EVERY  WEEK 

Two  meals  of  salt  beef  and  pork,  with  peas,  beans, 
greens,  roots,  etc.,  and  puddings.  For  drink,  good 
small  beer  and  cider. 

Two  meals  of  fresh  meat,  roasted,  baked,  broiled, 
or  fried,  with  proper  sauce  or  vegetables. 

One  meal  of  soup  and  fragments. 

One  meal  of  boiled  fresh  meat  with  proper  sauce 
and  broth. 

One  meal  of  salt  or  fresh  fish,  with  brown  bread. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  91 

FOR  BREAKFAST 

Tea,  coffee,  chocolate,  or  milk  porridge.  With 
tea  or  coffee,  white  bread  with  butter,  or  brown 
bread,  toasted  with  butter.  With  chocolate  or  milk 
porridge,  white  bread  without  butter.  With  tea 
coffee  and  chocolate  brown  sugar. 

FOR  SUPPER 

Milk,  with  hasty  pudding,  rice,  samp,  white 
bread,  etc.  Or  milk  porridge,  tea,  coffee  or  choco- 
late, as  for  breakfast. 

The  several  articles  or  provisions  above  men- 
tioned,  especially  dinners,  are  to  be  diversified  and 
changed  as  to  their  succession  through  the  week, 
or  as  much  as  may  be  agreeable;  with  the  addition  • 
of  puddings,  apple  pies,  dumplings,  cheese,  etc., 
to  be  interspersed  through  the  dinners,  as  often  as 
may  be  convenient  and  suitable. 

All  the  articles  of  provision  shall  be  good,  genuine 
and  unadulterated. 

The  meals  are  to  be  provided  at  stated  time,  and 
the  cookery  is  to  be  well  and  neatly  executed. 

That  the  steward  sit  at  meals  with  the  stu- 
dents, unless  prevented  by  company  or  business 
and  exercise  the  same  authority  as  is  customary 
and  needful  for  the  head  of  a  family  at  his 
table. 

That  the  steward  be  exemplary  in  his  moral  con- 
duct, and  do  not  fail  to  give  information  to  the 
authority  of  the  College  against  any  of  the  students 
who  may  transgress  any  of  the  College  orders  and 


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92  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

regulations;   and  to  this  purpose  that  he  keep  by 
him  a  copy  of  the  same. 

For  the  services  above  mentioned,  that  the  stew- 
ard be  allowed  and  paid  by  every  person  boarding 
in  Commons,  one  dollar  per  week;  to  be  paid  at 
the  expiration  of  each  quarter;'  if  not,  interest 
until  paid. 

This  was  in  the  earliest  days  of  the  Commons 
and  before  the  Revolution,  when  the  purchasing 
power  of  a  dollar  was  large.  The  annual  ex- 
penses at  Brown  I  find  advertised  somewhat 
later  on  as 

College  bills,  including  Tuition,  Room, 

Rent  Library  etc $54 

Board  in  Commons  about $75 


$129 


Dartmouth  College  may  be  traced  back  to 
the  interesting  project  of  founding  at  Bermuda 
an  institution  for  the  education  of  Indian 
youth,  to  promote  which  Bishop  Berkeley  came 
to  America  on  money  left  to  him  by  Hester 
Vanhomrigh,  after  she  had  been  flouted  by 
Dean  Swift! '  For  among  the  first  students 
educated  at  Yale  College  on  the  income  of  the 
Berkeley  estate  was  Eleazer  Wheelock,  founder 
of  Dartmouth;   and   Wheelock,   in    1755,  had 

1  See  my  "  Romance  of  Old  New  England  Roof-Trees." 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  93 

opened  More's  Indian  Charity  School  because 
he  had  Berkeley's-  ideal  distinctly  in  his  mind. 
The  first  Indian  youth  received  into  Eleazer 
Wheelock's  family  was  Samson  Occom,  a  Mo- 
hegan  Indian  who  was  so  much  of  a  scholar 
and  possessed  such  rare  personal  charm  that, 
when  sent  to  England  in  the  interest  of  Whee- 
lock's new  institution,  he  was  able  to  induce 
all  the  great  people,  from  the  king  down,  to 
subscribe  to  the  projected  college.  This  re- 
markable Indian  never  lost  sight  for  a  mo- 
ment, however,  of  the  object  of  his  visit  and, 
when  he  had  pushed  his  subscription  up  to 
eleven  hundred  pounds  and  placed  this  treasure 
under  a  board  of  trust  headed  by  Lord  Dart- 
mouth, he  calmly  returned  to  his  own  America 
and  to  Wheelock,  who  had  so  greatly  trusted 
him. 

In  August,  1770,  less  than  a  month  after 
George  III  had  evoked  the  charter  "  wise  and  lib- 
eral "  which  gave  to  the  New  World  the  insti- 
tution which  was  to  be  called  Dartmouth  Col- 
lege, —  in  recognition  of  the  kindness  and  in- 
terest of  the  second  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  — 
Wheelock,  with  teams  and  laborers,  pushed 
his  way  through  the  "  dreary  wood  "  to  Han- 
over to  begin  his  herculean  task  of  getting  the 
college  started.  The  first  building  was  a  log 
hut  about  eighteen  feet  square,  built  "  without 
stone,  brick,  glass  or  nail."    Oiled  paper  prob- 


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94  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

ably  did  duty  for  windows,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  time  in  all  poorer  habitations;  and  no 
nails  were  needed,  because  the  logs  were  dove- 
tailed. 

To  this  hut  came  soon  Mrs.  Wheelock,  Tutor 
Woodward,  thirty  students  (among  them  two 
Indians),  and  four  slaves,  the  lady  and  the 
tutor  riding  in  a  carriage  which  had  been  given 
by  John  Thornton  of  England.1  But  for  all 
they  rode  in  a  carriage,  they  had  not  found  the 
approach  easy;  trees  had  to  be  felled  before 
them  as  they  pushed  their  way  into  this  wilder- 
ness. Yet  they  made  so  notable  an  accession 
to  the  little  colony  that  with  their  coming  col- 
lege life  at  Dartmouth  may  be  said  to  have  be- 
gun. 

In  the  year  following,  1771,  Sir  John  Went- 
worth,  attended  by  a  retinue  of  sixty  gentlemen, 
came  up  from  Portsmouth  to  be  present  at 
Dartmouth's  first  Commencement.  This  was 
a  really  brave  act  on  the  part  of  the  elegant 
Colonial  governor;  for  there  was  danger  from 
wild  beasts  as  well  as  from  wild  Indians  in 
journeying  to  Dartmouth  thus  early,  and  his 
party  probably  had  to  camp  out  at  least  two 
nights  on  the  way.  Wheelock,  to  be  sure,  had 
come  before,  but  in  the  words  of  the  college 
ditty: 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  95 

"  Eleazer  Wheelock  was  a  very  pious  man, 
He  went  into  the  wilderness  to  teach  the  In- 
di-an." 

It  is  one  thing  to  undertake  a  hazardous 
journey  in  pursuit  of  an  ideal;  it  is  quite  an- 
other to  do  the  same  thing  as  part  of  one's 
official  routine.  When  Timothy  Dwight,  presi- 
dent of  Yale  College,  visited  Hanover  in  1797, 
the  settlement  contained  only  forty  houses. 
So  I  repeat  that  Governor  John  Wentworth 
is  deserving  of  distinct  credit  for  having  been 
present  at  a  Dartmouth  Commencement  as 
early  as  1771. 

During  the  first  ten  years  of  its  life,  Dart- 
mouth graduated  ninety-nine  men  as  against 
fifty-five  at  Harvard  and  thirty-six  at  Yale. 
And  Dartmouth  was  the  only  college  in  New 
England  that  kept  her  doors  open  and  con- 
ferred degrees  each  year  during  the  Revolu- 
tion. To  be  sure,  the  war  did  not  come  very 
near  to  the  college  in  the  wilderness.  "Some 
reports  of  cannon,"  Wheelock  wrote  in  his 
diary,  June  17,  1775.  "  We  wait  with  im- 
patience to  hear  the  occasion  and  the  event." 
How  long  they  had  to  wait  for  news  of  the 
battle  of  Bunker  Hill  I  do  not  know.  But  it 
takes  us  back  in  a  flash  to  those  far-away  days, 
and  especially  to  the  unique  conditions  at  this 
primitive  college,  to  learn  that  the  cannon's 
sound  was  first  detected  by  one  of  the  Indians 


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96  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

who  chanced  to  be  lying  with  his  ear  to  the 
ground. 

When  President  Wheelock  died  in  1779,  at 
the  age  of  sixty-eight,  he  was  succeeded  by  his 
son,  John,  then  twenty-five  years  of  age.  For 
a  period  of  thirty-six  years  this  incumbent 
maintained  a  successful  administration,  en- 
larging the  Faculty,  extending  the  curriculum, 
providing  new  buildings,  establishing  a  medi- 
cal department,  and  visiting  France,  Holland, 
and  England  to  seek  further  financial  aid  for 
his  institution.  Under  his  administration,  after 
what  has  been  described  as  "  a  long  agony  of 
effort,"  Dartmouth  Hall  first  came  into  being. 
In  1795,  the  College  Church,  in  which  Com- 
mencement exercises  have  since  been  held, 
was  built  by  private  subscription.  In  the  con- 
test between  the  college  and  the  university, 
this  church  was  once  held  by  garrison  and  bar- 
ricade for  three  days  and  three  nights,  in  order 
to  make  sure  that  the  college  Commencement 
of  August  17,  1817,  might  be  held  there  just  as 
previous  Commencements  had  been. 

Daniel  Webster,  who  defended  Dartmouth's 
interests  in  one  of  the  most  famous  law  cases 
in  which  a  college  was  ever  involved,1  gradu- 

1  This  was  one  of  the  most  important  cases  in  constitutional 
law  ever  decided  by  the  United  States  Supreme  Court.  The  issue 
involved  was  the  right  conferral  upon  Dartmouth  Trustees  by 
the  British  Crown  in  1769  to  govern  the  college  and  fill  all  vacancies 
in  their  body.  This  right  was  ably  defended  by  Daniel  Webster. 
See  New  International  Encyclopaedia,  Vol.  v,  p.  796. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  97 

ated  from  the  college  in  1801.  Webster,  was  the 
star  of  this  class,  as  Rufus  Choate  was  of  the 
class  graduated  eighteen  years  later.  Salmon 
P.  Chase,  whom  Lincoln  declared  to  be  "  one 
and  a  half  times  bigger  than  any  other  man 
I  have  ever  seen  ",  received  his  degree  here  in 
1816. 

The  tradition  of  Indian  obligation  still  lin- 
gers at  this  college  among  the  hills  of  New 
Hampshire  and  is  commemorated  on  Class 
Day  by  a  very  beautiful  custom.  For  then, 
on  the  eve  of  their  entrance  into  the  real  battle  of 
life,  the  seniors  assemble  in  the  college  park 
and,  before  the  tower  of  mediaeval  pattern 
which  has  been  erected  near  the  site  of  the  old 
pine,  renowned  for  its  traditional  relation  with 
Indian  students,  together  smoke  pipes  of  peace, 
all  of  which  are  solemnly  broken  afterwards. 
While  the  Dartmouth  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury thus  follows  a  custom  dear  to  the  Red- 
men  who  once  roamed  this  very  place,  the 
spirit  of  Eleazer  Wheelock  must  hover  very 
close  to  the  college  which  he  founded  out  of 
love  for  the  Indian,  and  which  he  lived  to  see 
grow  up  into  a  very  inspiring  and  impressive 
institution. 

Williams  College,  the  fifth  institution  for 
higher  education  to  be  established  in  New 
England,  traces  its  history  back  to  the  troub- 
lous times  of  the  French  and  Indian  Wars.    Its 


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98  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

site  adjoins  that  of  Fort  Massachusetts,  the 
farthest  west  of  the  chain  of  forts  which  con- 
stituted our  defence  against  Indian  encroach- 
ments; and  the  man  for  whom  the  college 
is  named  was  Ephraim  Williams,  captain  of 
the  company  of  soldiers  here  stationed.  As 
a  reward  for  his  faithful  service  in  this  con- 
nection, Williams  was,  in  1750,  granted  one 
hundred  and  ninety  acres  in  the  east  township 
of  the  Hoosac  and  thus  became  the  owner  of 
the  very  meadow  in  which  Fort  Massachusetts 
stood.  By  his  will  the  doughty  captain  pro- 
vided that  within  five  years  after  peace  had 
been  established,  his  real  estate  should  be 
sold,  and  from  the  income  thus  derived  there 
should  be  maintained  and  supported  "  a  free 
school  in  the  township  west  of  Fort  Massa- 
chusetts (commonly  called  West  Township) 
forever,  provided  such  township  fall  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  province  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  and  continue  under  that  jurisdic- 
tion, and  provided  also  the  Governor  of  said 
province,  shall  (when  a  suitable  number  of 
inhabitants  are  settled  there)  incorporate  the 
same  into  a  town  by  the  name  of  Williams- 
town."  This  will  was  dated  July  22,  1755, 
Williams  fell  on  the  September  8  following, 
while  engaged  in  the  expedition  against  Crown 
Point. 
Thirty  years  passed  before  anything  at  all 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  90 

was  done  toward  establishing  the  school  (or 
which  this  donation  provided.  Then  the  neces- 
sary first  steps  were  taken  by  Theodore  Sedg- 
wick and  eight  other  persons  of  the  highest 
distinction  in  Western  Massachusetts,  almost 
all  of  whom  were  graduates  of  Yale  College. 
That  the  new  institution  was  to  be  more  than 
a  "  free  school "  for  Williamstown  children 
was  made  clear  at  the  very  start  by  the  vote 
that  the  school  building  be  constructed  of 
bricks  and  be  seventy-two  feet  in  length,  forty 
feet  wide,  and  three  stories  high.  It  was  also 
provided  that  the  school  should  be  open  "  to 
the  free  citizens  of  the  American  states  indis- 
criminately." 

Following  the  customs  of  the  times,  a  lottery 
was  held  to  raise  additional  funds  for  building, 
and  with  the  money  thus  obtained  and  a  sub- 
scription of  two  thousand  dollars  from  the  resi- 
dents of  Williamstown,  the  school  was  opened 
October  20,  1791,  with  the  Reverend  Ebenezer 
Fitch,  a  graduate  of  Yale  College,  as  preceptor, 
and  Mr.  John  Lester  as  assistant.  There  were 
two  departments  at  the  beginning  —  a  gram- 
mar school,  or  academy,  and  an  English  free 
school.  In  the  first  the  usual  college  studies 
of  that  day  were  taught.  In  the  second,  dis- 
continued in  1793  when  the  institution  was 
formally  recognized  as  of  collegiate  standing, 
instruction  was  given  in  the  common  English 


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100  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

studies  to  boys  from  the  higher  classes  of  the 
town. 

To  the  college  opportunities  here  offered 
the  response  was  enthusiastic  from  the  first. 
No  institution  of  similar  appeal  then  existed 
nearer  than  Hanover,  New  Hampshire,  or  New 
Haven,  Connecticut.  Thus  the  president  was 
able  to  write  to  a  friend  as  early  as  1799: 
"  Things  go  well  in  our  infant  seminary.  .  .  . 
But  our  ambition  is  to  make  good  scholars  rather 
than  add  to  our  numbers  and  in  this  we  mean 
not  to  be  outdone  by  any  college  in  New  Eng- 
land." With  this  early  ambition  of  a  Williams 
president,  it  is  interesting  to  connect  an  extract 
from  the  inaugural  address  of  President  Hop- 
kins, made  nearly  forty  years  later:  "  I  have 
no  ambition",  he  declared,  "to  build  up  here 
what  would  be  called  a  great  institution;  the 
wants  of  the  community  do  not  require  it. 
But  I  do  desire  and  shall  labor,  that  it  may  be  a 
safe  college;  that  its  reputation  may  be  sus- 
tained and  raised  still  higher  .  .  .  that  here 
there  may  be  health,  and  cheerful  study,  and 
kind  feelings,  and  pure  morals."  This  ambition 
has  been  nobly  realized  at  Williams;  quality 
rather  than  quantity  has  been  the  aim  from  the 
first.  From  a  devout  group  of  Williams  men 
emanated  the  great  Board  of  American  For- 
eign Missions,  and  it  is  to  Williams  that  we 
owe,  too,  that  famous  definition  of  a  college 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  101 

education:  "  Mark  Hopkins  on  one  end  of  a 
log  with  a  student  at  the  other."  * 

Williams'  first  class,  which  was  graduated 
in  1796,  consisted  of  six  members,  and  by 
the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century 
there  were  not  more  than  eighty  students  in 
the  whole  college,  so  that  it  was  obviously 
rather  alarming  when  one  half  of  them  de- 
clared their  intention  of  withdrawing,  with 
President  Moore,  to  Amherst  College  on  the 
other  side  of  the  mountains.  The  isolation  of 
the  college  was  felt  at  this  time  to  be  an  almost 
insuperable  barrier  to  its  continued  growth. 
To  Emory  Washburn,  who  entered  the  junior 
class  in  1815,  we  are  indebted  for  the  following 
vivid  glimpses  of  life  in  the  Hoosac  Valley  at 
this  early  period: 

"  During  my  residence  in  College,  nothing 
in  the  form  of  stage-coach  or  vehicle  for  public 
communication  ever  entered  the  town.  Once 
a  week,  a  solitary  messenger,  generally  on 
horseback,  came  over  the  Florida  Mountain, 
bringing  us  our  letters  from  Boston  and  the 
eastern  part  of  the  State.  .  .  .  And  by  some 
similar  mode  and  at  hke  intervals  we  heard 


ing  of  Williams  alumni  held  in  New  York  to  discuss  the  college1! 
pressing  need  of  books  and  apparatus  said  —  after  expressing  his 
realisation  of  the  value  and  need  of  these  things:  "  But  give  me  a 
log-cabin  in  the  center  of  the  State  of  Ohio,  with  one  room  in  it, 
and  a  bench  with  Mark  Hopkins  on  one  end  of  it  and  me  on  the 
other,  and  that  would  be  a  college  good  enough  for  me." 


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102  SOCIAL   LIFE  IN 

from  Stockbridge,  Pittsfield,  Troy  and  Albany. 
With  the  exception  of  these  not  a  ripple  of  the 
commotions  that  disturbed  the  world  outside 
of  these  barriers  of  hills  and  mountains,  ever 
reached  the  unruffled  calm  of  our  valley  life. 
In  coming  from  my  home  in  Leicester,  Massa- 
chusetts, I  was  compelled  to  rely  upon  stage 
and  chance.  My  route  was  by  stage  to  Pitts- 
field,  and  thence  by  a  providential  team  or 
carriage,  the  remainder  of  my  journey.  I  have 
often  smiled  as  I  have  recalled  with  what  per- 
severing assiduity  I  waylaid  every  man  who 
passed  by  the  hotel,  in  order  to  find  some  one 
who  would  consent  to  take  as  a  passenger  a 
luckless  wight  in  pursuit  of  an  education  under 
such  difficulties. 

"  While  such  was  the  difficulty  of  access  to 
the  College,  it  presented  little,  to  the  eye  of 
one  who  visited  it  for  the  first  time,  to  reward 
the  struggle  it  had  cost  him.  When  I  joined 
it  it  bad  two  buildings,  and,  I  think,  fifty-eight 
students,  with  two  professors  and  two  tutors. 
The  East  College  was  a  fine,  plain  imposing 
structure,  four  stories  in  "height,  built  of  brick. 
.  .  .  The  West  College  contained  the  Chapel, 
which  occupied  the  second  and  third  stories 
of  the  south  end  of  the  building.  .  .  .  The  only 
water  we  had  to  use,  was  drawn  from  a  spring 
at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  south  of  the  East  College. 
And  to  that  every  student  from  both  Colleges 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  103 

repaired  with  his  pail  as  his  necessities  required. 
The  consequence  was,  it  must  be  confessed, 
that  there  was  no  excessive  use  of  that  element 
of  comfort  and  neatness.  Not  one  of  the  rooms 
or  passage  ways  was  painted.  No  one  of  the 
rooms  was  papered  or  ever  had  a  carpet  on  it. 
And  I  do  not  believe  the  entire  furniture  of 
any  one  room,  excepting  perhaps  the  bed, 
could  have  cost,  or  would  have  sold  for,  five 
dollars.  - 

"  And  yet  it  was  not  from  the  poverty  of  the 
students  that  the  style  of  their  rooms  and  their 
surroundings  was  thus  humble  and  poverty- 
stricken.  It  was  borrowed  from  the  tradition- 
ary habits  and  fashion  of  the  institution.  It 
had  grown  up  in  a  sequestered  spot  with  limited 
means,  while  many  of  the  early  students  had 
resorted  to  it  because  of  its  cheap  education, 
and  there  was  next  to  nothing  to  awaken  any 
rivalry  in  the  style  of  dress,  furniture,  or  living, 
or  even  to  arouse  a  comparison  between  these 
and  what  may  have  prevailed  in  other  col- 
leges."1 

Even  at  Williams,  however,  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  drinking,  as  our  "  Old  grad  "  goes 
on  to  admit.  "  Everybody  at  that  day  drank 
and  so  be  it  excited  the  animal  spirits,  it  mat- 
tered not  much  what  the  liquor  was."  Will- 


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104  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

iams  students,  like  the  other  college  boys  of 
these  early  days,  suffered  greatly,  it  is  plain, 
from  a  lack  of  organized  athletics  which  would 
have  provided  a  vent  for  their  animal  spirits. 

Bowdoin  College  only  narrowly  escaped  hav- 
ing the  name  of  John  Hancock  bestowed 
upon  it.  For  its  beginnings  date  back  to  the 
days  when  the  political  power  of  Hancock 
was  at  its  zenith,  and  had  his  friends  con- 
trolled both  houses  of  the  Great  and  General 
Court  of  Massachusetts,  —  as  they  did  one 
house,  —  his  name  instead  of  that  of  his  suc- 
cessor, James  Bowdoin,  would  have  distin- 
guished the  new  institution  then  just  being 
started  "  in  the  vague  Orient  of  Down  East." 
From  the  portrait  by  Robert  Feke  which  hangs 
in  one  of  the  halls  of  the  college,  Governor 
Bowdoin  is  seen  to  be  a  man  of  serene  dignity 
and  elegant  habiliments.  His  bronze  velvet  coat, 
his  gold-embroidered  waistcoat  of  pearl-col- 
ored satin,  his  curling  wig,  and  his  lace  ruffles 
all  bespeak  an  imposing  personality.  Yet  the 
special  patron  and  benefactor  of  this  strug- 
gling little  college  in  the  wilds  of  Maine  was 
not  the  beruffled  governor  at  all,  but  his  son, 
James,  at  one  time  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to 
Spain. 

No  less  difficulty  was  experienced  in  determin- 
ing the  local  habitation  of  the  college  than  in 
fixing    upon    its    name.      Portland    contended 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  106 

vigorously  for  the  honor,  intending  that  the 
seat  of  the  institution  should  be  in  Gorham, 
near  by.  But  Brunswick  on  the  Androscoggin 
was  finally  selected  as  the  site,  five  townships 
in  the  wilds  of  Maine  were  donated  as  a  source 
of  funds,  and  the  bill  approving  of  the  insti- 
tution was  definitively  signed  by  Governor 
Samuel  Adams  on  June  24, 1794.  Thus  Bowdoin 
becomes  the  sixth  college  of  the  New  England 
group,  though  it  was  not  until  1802  that  its 
first  class  was  admitted.  The  first  president 
chosen  was  Reverend  Joseph  McKeen,  who 
had  been  graduated  at  Dartmouth  in  1774,  and 
was  then  a  pastor  at  Beverly,  Massachusetts. 
He  was  inaugurated  in  the  grove  of  pines  be- 
hind the  present  group  of  college  buildings. 
His  term  saw  only  one  class  graduated,  how- 
ever, the  first,  in  which  seven  students  took 
their  degrees.  Nathan  Lord,  who  was  the 
honored  president  of  Dartmouth  for  a  great 
many  years,  was  a  member  of  this  class. 

The  second  president  of  Bowdoin  was  Rev- 
erend Jesse  Appleton  (Dartmouth,  1792),  who 
was  inaugurated  in  December,  1807.  The 
twelve  years  during  which  he  served  were 
memorable  and  very  successful  ones  in  the 
history  of  the  college.  The  number  of  stu- 
dents had  now  considerably  increased,  the 
teaching  force  had  been  strengthened,  and  from 
Honorable  James  Bowdoin  (Harvard,  1771),  a 


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106  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

library,  a  gallery  of  paintings,  a  large  collec- 
tion of  minerals,  and  some  valuable  apparatus 
had  been  inherited.1 

To  succeed  President  Appleton,  the  Corpor- 
ation elected,  in  1819,  the  Reverend  William 
Allen,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  who  was  at  this 
tune  president  of  Dartmouth.  The  nineteen 
years  of  his  service  was  signalized  by  the  open- 
ing of  the  Maine  Medical  School  in  connection 
with  the  college,  a  school  of  which  Doctor 
Nathan  Smith,  Doctor  John  D.  Wells,  and 
Doctor  John  Delcmater  were  the  first  pro- 
fessors. Of  Doctor  Smith,  who  was  very  emi- 
nent in  his  profession,  an  amusing  story  is 
told.  One  day  a  messenger  summoned  him  in 
all  haste  to  set  a  broken  limb,  but  when  he 
reached  the  house  to  which  he  had  been  called, 
the  patient  was  discovered  to  be  a  goose. 
Very  gravely  the  doctor  examined  the  fracture, 
opened  his  case,  set  and  bound  the  limb,  and 
promising  to  call  the  next  day,  took  his  un- 
perturbed departure.  He  did  call  the  next  day 
and  for  several  days  succeeding  —  and  then  he 
sent  a  bill  for  his  services  to  the  mischie- 
vous lads  who  had  thought  thus  to  disconcert 


that  he  should  be  the  person  memorial  tied  by  the  college, 

son  greatly  appreciated  this  and  gave  assurances  of  aid  from 

family.    This  promise  he  generously  kept  and,  as  a  further  sigi 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  107 

the  young  instructor  of  the  Maine  Medical 
School. 

Another  very  interesting  character  among 
the  early  members  of  the  Bowdoin  Faculty 
was  Parker  Cleaveland,  son  of  a  Revolutionary 
surgeon,  who  had  been  graduated  from  Har- 
vard "  the  best  general  scholar  in  his  class." 
He  came  to  Bowdoin  to  stay  for  the  rest  of  his 
long  and  distinguished  life.  For  fifty-three 
years  he  was  "  the  genius  of  the  place,"  min- 
eralogy being  the  subject  of  his  special  interest, 
though  chemistry  was  the  subject  which  he 
chiefly  taught.  For  many  years  he  gave  popular 
lectures  in  the  towns  about  the  State,  his  ap- 
paratus, as  he  made  these  scientific  excursions, 
being  moved  from  place  to  place  on  a  huge  cart 
or  sled  drawn  by  a  yoke  of  oxen. 

In  Professor  Cleaveland's  handwriting,  on 
a  carefully  treasured  programme  for  Bowdoin's 
Commencement  in  1825,  may  be  found  this 
announcement : 

"Oration:  Native  Writers, 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow, 

Portland." 

Which  brings  us  to  the  heyday  of  Bowdoin's 
history,  the  time  when  Franklin  Pierce,  later 
President  of  the  United  States,  Jacob  Abbott, 
Longfellow,  and  Nathaniel  Hathorne  (as  the 


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108  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

name  was  then  spelled)  were  all  studying  to- 
gether under  the  Bowdoin  pines.  In  the  pref- 
.  ace  to  "  The  Snow  Image  **,  Hawthorne  recalls 
the  days  at  "  a  country  college ",  when  the 
"  two  idle  lads  "  (the  book  is  dedicated  to  his 
classmate,  Horatio  Bridge)  fished  in  the 
"  shadowy  httle  stream  wandering  riverward 
through  the  forest  *\  "  shot  gray  squirrels  *\ 
"  picked  blueberries  in  study  hours  "f  or 
"  watched  the  logs  tumbling  in  the  Andro- 
scoggin." Hawthorne  was  then  as  shy  and  as 
removed  from  the  mass  of  men  as  he  was  in 
later  years;  he  could  not  be  persuaded  to  take 
part  in  the  Commencement  exercises  —  though 
he  led  his  class  as  a  writer  —  nor  to  join  them 
in  having  their  profiles  cut  in  paper,  the  method 
then  used  for  having  class  pictures  taken.  The 
man  who  came  nearest  to  being  Hawthorne's 
friend  while  in  college  was  Pierce,  who  was  in 
the  class  above  him.  To  the  relation  then  be- 
gun may  be  traced  the  Great  Romancer's  ap- 
pointment as  consul  at  Liverpool  made  by 
Pierce  when  he  became  President. 

Hawthorne  began  his  first  novel  while  at 
Bowdoin,  but  we  have  received  from  him  no 
pictures  of  the  daily  life  at  this  institution 
during  these  days  of  President  Allen's  adminis- 
tration. From  the  printed  regulations  we  know, 
however,  that  students  rose  at  six  with  the 
ringing  of  the  bell,  attended  morning  prayers 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  109 

immediately,  and  then  went  to  the  first  recita- 
tion in  a  building  deemed  too  cold  by  the  Faculty 
to  be  used  in  winter  for  any  exercise  lasting 
more  than  fifteen  minutes.  Then  came  break- 
fast at  commons,  which  probably  did  not  take 
long,  inasmuch  as  board  for  a  day  cost  only  a 
shilling  at  this  period.  At  nine  o'clock  stu- 
dents retired  to  their  rooms  for  study,  and  at 
eleven  emerged  for  the  midday  recitation. 
After  this,  time  was  allotted  for  consulting  the 
library,  but  "  since  no  tinder-graduate  could 
borrow  books  oftener  than  once  in  three  weeks, 
and  Freshmen  were  limited  to  one  book  at  a 
time,  this  opportunity  did  not  keep  many  away 
from  dinner."  In  the  afternoon  came  another 
study  period  and  more  recitations,  then  prayers; 
and  after  supper,  until  eight  o'clock  the  students 
"  recreated." 

For  the  Vermont  boy  there  was  Middlebury 
College,  which  dates  from  1800  and  which  has 
always  been  called  a  child  of  Yale  for  the  rea- 
son that  President  Timothy  Dwight  helped 
greatly  to  get  the  institution  started.  Doctor 
Dwight  visited  the  village  of  Middlebury  for 
the  first  time  in  1798,  —  just  after  the  legisla- 
ture had  granted  a  charter  for  the  Addison 
County  Grammar  School.  A  building  was  even 
then  being  erected  for  this  project,  and  Doctor 
Dwight  urged  strongly  that,  as  no  college  was 
then  in  operation  in  Vermont  and  young  men 


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110 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


were  forced,  at  great  inconvenience,  to  travel 
a  long  way  to  get  their  higher  education,  this 
be  developed  into  the  nucleus  of  a  college.  "  The 
local  situation,  the  sober  and  religious  charac- 
ter of  the  inhabitants,  their  manners  and  vari- 
ous other  circumstances,  contribute  ",  it  was 
pointed  out,  "  towards  making  Middlebury  a 
very  desirable  seat  for  such  a  seminary."  Rev- 
erend Jeremiah  Atwater,  a  graduate  of  Yale 
and  for  several  years  tutor  there,  was,  upon 
the  recommendation  of  Doctor  Dwight,  made 
first  president  of  the  budding  college,  he  and 
Tutor  Joel  Doolittle,  of  the  Yale  class  of  1799, 
constituting  the  entire  Faculty  for  the  seven 
students  who  made  up  the  first  class. 

Doctor  Dwight  made  two  visits  to  the  col- 
lege in  its  early  years,  and  after  the  second  of 
these,  in  1810,  wrote:  "It  has  continued  to 
prosper,  although  its  funds  have  been  derived 
from  private  donations  and  chiefly,  if  not 
wholly,  from  the  inhabitants  of  the  town.  The 
number  of  students  is  now  one  hundred  and 
ten  —  probably  as  virtuous  a  collection  of 
youths  as  can  be  found  in  any  seminary  in  the 
world.  The  Faculty  consists  of  a  president,  a 
professor  of  law,  a  professor  of  mathematics 
and  natural  philosophy,  who  teaches  chemis- 
try, also,  a  professor  of  languages  and  two 
tutors.  The  inhabitants  of  Middlebury  have 
lately  subscribed  $8,000  for  the  purpose  of  erect- 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  111 

ing  another  collegiate  building.1  When  it  is 
remembered  that  twenty-five  years  ago  this 
spot  was  a  wilderness,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
these  efforts  have  done  the  authors  of  them 
the  highest  honor." 

i  The  allusion  here  is  probably  to  Fainter  Hall,  erected  in  1814. 
and  the  home  for  a  century  now  of  Middlebury's  most  distinguished 
students.  The  oldest  college  building  in  Vermont,  it  is  also  one 
of  the  best  existing  examples  of  Colonial  architecture  of  its  class. 
Similarly  beautiful  is  the  chapel,  erected  in  1836,  whose  dome 
dominates  the  village  landscape. 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


CHAPTER  III 

CHOOSING  A  PROFESSION 

DURING  the  seventeenth  century  the 
clergy  were  almost  the  only  educated 
professional  men  in  New  England.  Law- 
yers were  few  and  were  regarded  with  sus- 
picion for  the  reason  that  the  clergy  had  set 
up  the  Mosaic  code  and  thought  its  observance 
all  that  could  possibly  be  desired.  Though 
justice  or  an  approximation  thereto  had  been 
administered  for  centuries  in  the  English  courts, 
yet,  under  the  theocracy  which  obtained  in 
New  England,  there  was  almost  no  proper  pro- 
tection, during  the  first  hundred  years  of  our 
history,  for  property,  for  life,  or  for  liberty. 
So,  since  lawyers  had  no  standing  and  trained 
physicians  were  to  be  found  only  here  and  there, 
to  become  a  minister  was  obviously  the  line  of 
least  resistance. 

The  various  colleges,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
all  strongly  theological  in  their  bent;  and  all 
maintained  professors  of  Hebrew  and  other 
studies  looking  to  preparation  for  the  ministry. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  113 

At  Harvard  the  avowed  object  from  the  be- 
ginning had  been  the  nurturing  of  a  learned 
ministry.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to 
find  that  even  so  late  as  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  theological  bias  in  this 
institution  was  undisturbed. 

In  the  year  of  President  John  Adams's  gradu- 
ation, 1755,  every  one  of  the  twenty-four  grad- 
uates discussed  a  theological  subject  at  Com- 
mencement —  save  one.  That  one  was  John 
Adams,  who  had  already  determined  to  become 
a  lawyer  at  any  cost,  and  who  chose  a  political 
topic  for  his  Commencement  part. 

Nor  did  young  ministers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  lack  definite  professional  training  for 
their  work,  even  in  the  days  before  theological 
seminaries  were  established.  It  was  customary 
for  parsons  of  many  years*  experience  to  take 
into  their  families  youths  who  had  chosen  the 
ministry  for  their  career,  with  the  result  that 
several  New  England  parsonages  were  vir- 
tually divinity  schools.  Harvard's  own  Di- 
vinity School,  incorporated  in  1826,  graduated 
its  first  class  in  1817.  One  member  of  this 
class  was  James  Walker,  "  whose  ethical  genius 
made  his  presidency  of  Harvard  one  of  the 
most  noble  of  a  long  and  honorable  line."  In 
the  next  class  were  John  G.  Palfrey,  John 
Pierpont,  and  another  president  of  Harvard, 
Jared  Sparks. 


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114  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

The  lad  whose  tastes  impelled  him  to  the 
practice  of  medicine,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
not  obliged,  in  the  early  days,  to  take  any  col- 
lege or  professional  courses  before  setting  out 
on  his  life-work.  All  he  had  to  do  was  to  get 
a  kind  of  office-boy's  place  with  some  physician 
of  standing,  and  after  a  season  of  reading  his 
master's  books,  tending  his  master's  horse, 
grinding  his  master's  drugs,  and  mixing  his  mas- 
ter's plasters,  be  himself  would  become  a  dis- 
penser of  "  physick  "  that  either  killed  or  cured. 
Occasionally,  to  be  sure,  a  properly  certificated 
person  arrived  from  England  and  announced 
his  readiness  to  serve  a  community  as  physi- 
cian. Thus  I  find  in  the  Boston  News-Letter  of 
February  25,  1725,  the  following  "  card  ": 

"  These  are  to  give  notice  to  all  persons  that 
John  Eliot,  chirurgeon  to  his  Excellency  Gov. 
Phillip's  Regiment,  .  .  .  prescribes  Physick 
and  undertakes  all  manner  of  Operations  in 
Chyrurgery  &  is  every  year  supplied  with 
fresh  Drugs  from  London,  and  will  undertake 
any  Persons  Malady  or  Wound  as  reasonably 
as  any  can  pretend  to." 

Presumably  this  "  chirurgeon  "  found  plenty 
to  do,  for  men  of  his  profession  were  exceed- 
ingly rare  in  the  colonies  thus  early,  ministers 
making  it  a  part  of  their  duty  to  give  medical 
advice  to  those  in  need  of  such  friendliness.  As 
late  as  1746,  a  Massachusetts  town  set  aside 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  115 

five  pounds  for  its  minister  in  return  for  his 
serving  the  poor  of  the  place  with  medicine, 
and  Cotton  Mather,  President  Hoar,  President 
Rogers,  and  President  Chauncey  of  Harvard 
College  all  practised  medicine  by  virtue  of  the 
fact  that  they  were  professional  curers  of  souls. 

This  combination  of  physic  and  piety  ap- 
pealed strongly  to  the  Puritan,  and  Cotton 
Mather's  medical  work,  "  The  Angel  of  Be- 
thesda  ",  was  written  to  encourage  the  alliance. 
This  book,  which  is  still  only  in  manuscript,  is 
particularly  interesting  for  the  light  it  sheds 
on  the  early  opposition  to  inoculation.  Ma- 
ther's friend,  Doctor  Zabdiel  Boylston,  was 
the  first  physician  to  inaugurate  this  great 
forward  step  in  medicine  by  inoculating  his 
own  son,  a  child  sis  years  old. 

A  very  curious  custom  arose  in  connection 
with  inoculation.  People  went  visiting  for  the 
sake  of  taking  the  cure  away  from  home,  and 
frequently  little  groups  of  friends  assembled 
at  some  one's  house  and  underwent  in  company 
the  trying  gradations  of  the  treatment.  Be- 
fore this  custom  became  fashionable,  Cotton 
Mather  had  a  kinsman  at  his  house  taking  the 
cure,  who  was  subjected  to  very  rough  treat- 
ment at  the  hands  of  those  opposed  to  this 
newest  thing  in  medicine: 

"  My  Kinsman,  the  Minister  of  Roxbury  ", 
writes  the  Boston  divine,  "  being  entertained 


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116  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

at  my  House,  that  he  might  there  undergo  the 
Small-pox  inoculated,  and  so  Return  to  the 
Service  of  his  Flock,  which  have  the  Contagion 
begun  among  them:  Towards  Three  a  clock 
in  the  Night,  as  it  grew  towards  the  Morning 
of  this  Day  (November  14, 1721)  some  unknown 
Hands  threw  a  fired  Granado  into  the  Cham- 
ber where  my  kinsman  lay,  and  which  uses  to 
be  my  Lodging-Room.  The  Weight  of  the  Iron 
Ball  alone,  had  it  fallen  upon  his  Head,  would 
have  been  enough  to  have  done  part  of  the 
Business  designed.  But  the  Granado  was 
charged,  the  upper  part  with  dried  powder  and 
what  else  I  know  not,  in  such  manner  that  upon 
going  off,  it  must  have  splitt,  and  have  proba- 
bly killed  the  persons  in  the  Room,  and  cer- 
tainly fired  the  Chamber,  and  speedily  Laid 
the  House  in  Ashes.  But  this  Night  there  stood 
by  me  the  angel  of  God  whose  I  am  and  whom 
I  serve;  and  the  Merciful  providence  of  my 
Saviour  so  ordered  it,  that  the  Granado  pasing 
thro'  the  Window,  had  by  the  Iron  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  Casement,  such  a  Turn  given  to  it, 
that  in  falling  on  the  Floor,  the  fired  wild-fire 
in  the  Fuse  was  violently  shaken  out  upon  the 
Floor,  without  firing  the  Granado.  When  the 
Granado  was  taken  up  there  was  found  a  paper 
so  tied  with  string  about  the  fuse  that  it  might 
out-five  the  breaking  of  the  shell,  —  which 
had  these  words  in  it:  —  Cotton  Mather,  you 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  117 

Dog,  Dam  you:  I'll  enoculate  you  with  this, 
with  a  pox  to  you." 

The  time  had  passed  when  the  Mathers 
might  do  what  they  would  in  Boston.  But  is  it 
not  a  curious  commentary  on  the  reliance 
which  may  be  placed  on  contemporary  public 
opinion  to  recall  that  when  Cotton  Mather 
persecuted  people  for  witchcraft,  every  one 
called  him  blessed,  and  when  he  advocated  a 
really  great  reform  in  medicine,  there  were  none 
so  poor  to  do  him  reverence. 

As  Cotton  Mather  was  drawing  to  the  end  of 
his  long  life,  there  came  to  New  England  (in 
1718)  William  Douglass,  a  Scotsman,  who 
was  then  about  twenty-seven  years  old  and 
had  been  trained  in  medicine  at  Leyden  and 
at  Paris.  He  was  one  of  those  violently  op- 
posed to  inoculation,  but  he  established  himself 
as  a  physician  and  practised  in  Boston  almost 
up  to  the  time  of  his  death  in  1752.  He  is  the 
author  of  a  number  of  books,  in  one  of  which 
he  expressed  himself  thus  concerning  the  med- 
ical profession: 

"  In  our  plantations,  a  practitioner,  bold, 
rash,  impudent,  a  liar,  basely  born  and  edu- 
cated, has  much  the  advantage  of  an  honest, 
cautious,  modest  gentleman.  In  general  the 
physical  practice  in  our  colonies  is  so  per- 
niciously bad  that  excepting  in  surgery  and 
some  very  acute  cases,  it  i3  better  to  let  nature 


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118  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

under  a  proper  regimen  take  her  course,  .  .  . 
than  to  trust  to  the  honesty  and  sagacity  of 
the  practitioner.  Our  American  practitioners 
are  so  rash  and  officious,  the  saying  in  .  .  .  Ec- 
clesiasticus  .  .  .  may  with  much  propriety  be 
applied  to  them:  'He  that  sinneth  before  his 
Maker  let  him  fall  into  the  hand  of  the  phy- 
sician.1 Frequently  there  is  more  danger  from 
the  physician  than  from  the  distemper.  .  .  . 

"  But  sometimes,  notwithstanding  the  mal- 
practice, nature  gets  the  better  of  the  doctor, 
and  the  patient  recovers.  Our  practitioners 
deal  much  in  quackery  and  quackish  medicines, 
as  requiring  no  labor  of  thought  or  composition, 
and  highly  recommended  in  the  London  quack- 
bills  —  in  which  all  the  reading  of  many  of  our 
practitioners  consists.  When  I  first  arrived 
in  New  England,  I  asked  ...  a  noted  facetious 
practitioner  what  was  their  general  method 
of  practice.  He  told  me  their  practice  was  very 
uniform:  bleeding,  vomiting,  blistering,  pur- 
ging, anodyne,  and  so  forth."  * 

And  then,  as  an  illustration  of  the  amusing 
audacity  of  quacks  in  the  English  colonies, 
Doctor  Douglass  cites  a  medical  advertisement 
in  which,  among  other  nostrums,  the  doctor 
announces  "  an  elegant  medicine  to  prevent 
the  yellow  fever  and  dry  gripes  in  the  West  In- 
dies."    This,  Douglass  thinks,  is  only  to  be 

1 "  Summary ,"  II.  361-352. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  119 

equalled  by  a  similar  advertisement  published 
in  Jamaica  immediately  after  an  earthquake 
had  done  great  destruction  there.  The  physi- 
cian offered  to  the  public  "  pills  to  prevent 
persons  or  their  effects  suffering  by  earth- 
quakes." Physicians  were  not  the  only  people 
attacked  by  this  author,  however,  so  we  must 
take  his  caustic  statements  with  several  grains 
of  salt.  Good  men  and  true  were  then,  as  now, 
to  be  found  in  this  calling,  and  the  profession 
of  the  physician  was  often  hereditary  —  just  as 
we  have  seen  that  of  the  preacher  to  be  in  the 
case  of  the  Mathers  and  many  another  New  Eng- 
land family.  Doctor  Benjamin  Gott,  who  was  a 
physician  of  some  prominence  in  Massachu- 
setts in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
was  one  of  the  three  sons  of  John  Gott  of  Wen- 
ham,  all  of  whom  were  destined  for  the  "  art 
and  mysteries  "  of  the  doctor.  The  youngest 
of  the  three,  Benjamin,  was  indentured  to 
Doctor  Samuel  Wallis  of  Ipswich  when  about 
fourteen,  and  as  his  father  died  in  1732,  before 
the  term  of  apprenticeship  had  expired,  his 
two  elder  brothers  were  charged  in  the  will 
"  to  find  him  [Benjamin]  with  good  and  suffi- 
cient clothing  during  the  time  he  is  to  live  with 
Dr.  Wallis  as  may  appear  by  his  indenture, 
and  to  pay  him  £300  in  silver  money  or  in  good 
bills  of  credit  when  he  arrives  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one  years." 


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120  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

In  due  time  Benjamin  completed  his  student 
term,  married  the  daughter  of  Reverend  Robert 
Breck  of  Marlboro,  and  was  himself  in  a  po- 
sition to  take  in  his  brother-in-law  as  an  ap- 
prentice. Thus  when  Reverend  Mr.  Breck 
died,  on  January  6,  1731,  he  bequeathed  to 
Doctor  Gott  "  two  acres  of  land  as  recompense 
for  instructing  my  son  Robert  in  the  rules  of 
physic."  This  Robert  Breck,  Junior,  however, 
appears  to  have  educated  himself  in  medicine 
only  for  the  sake  of  using  his  skill  while  pur- 
suing the  profession  of  a  preacher.  Many  a 
minister  followed  this  practice,  Cotton  Mather 
among  others.  But  a  younger  brother  of  Robert 
Breck  studied  medicine  and  became  a  practicing 
physician  of  Worcester  in  1748;  Doctor  Gott's 
oldest  son,  Benjamin,  also  became  a  physician 
and  practiced  in  Brookfield;  while  Anna  Gott, 
a  daughter  of  the  first  Doctor  Benjamin,  married 
Doctor  Samuel  Brigham,  a  physician  of  Marl- 
boro, and  their  son,  Samuel  Brigham,  practiced 
medicine  in  Boylston.  That  "  doctoring  "  ran 
in  this  family  seems  sufficiently  established. 

Doctor  Benjamin  Gott,  the  first,  took  into  his 
office,  on  January  8,  1738  or  1784,  a  young  man 
named  Hollister  Baker,  then  about  sixteen, 
who  was  to  stay  with  him  until  he  should  come 
of  age.  Baker's  original  indenture  is  very  in- 
teresting for  the  light  it  throws  on  medical  edu- 
cation in  the  year  1734.    It  runs  as  follows: 


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OLD    NEW  ENGLAND  121 

THIS  INDENTURE  WITNESSETH,  That  Hol- 
lister  Baker  a  minor  aged  about  sixteen  son  of  Mr. 
Eben'  Baker  late  of  Marlborough  in  the  County  of 
Middlesex  Gent.  Deceased  of  his  own  free  will  and 
accord,  and  with  the  Consent  of  Benj"  Wood  of 
Marlborough  in  ye  County  aforesaid  his  Guardian 
doth  Put  and  Bind  himself  to  be  an  Apprentice 
unto  Benj*  Gott  of  Marlboro  in  ye  County  afore- 
said Physcician  to  learn  his  Art,  Trade  or  Mystery, 
and  with  him  the  said  Benj*  Gott  after  the  manner 
of  an  Apprentice,  to  Dwell  and  Serve  from  the  Day 
of  the  Date  hereof,  for  and  during  the  full  and  just 
Term  of  five  Years  and  four  months  next  ensuing, 
and  fully  to  be  compleat  and  ended.  During  all 
which  said  Term,  the  said  Apprentice  his  said  Mas- 
ter and  Mistress  honestly  and  faithfully  shall  Serve, 
so  long  as  his  Master  lives  of  said  Term,  their  Se- 
crets keep  Close  their  lawful  and  reasonable  Com- 
mands every  where  gladly  Do  and  Perform;  Dam- 
age to  his  said  Master  and  Mistress  he  shall  not 
wilfully  Do,  his  Masters  Goods  he  shall  not  Waste, 
Embezel,  Purloine  or  Lend  unto  others,  nor  suffer 
the  same  to  be  wasted  or  purloined;  but  to  his 
power  shall  forthwith  Discover,  and  make  known 
the  same  unto  his  said  Master  and  Mistress.  Tav- 
erns and  Alehouses  he  shall  not  frequent;  at  Cards, 
Dice  or  any  other  unlawful  Game  he  shall  not  Play; 
Fornication  he  shall  not  Commit  nor  Matrimony 
Contract  with  any  Person,  during  said  Term : 
From  his  Masters  Service  he  shall  not  at  any  time 
unlawfully  Absent  himself  But  in  all  things  as  a 
good,  honest  and  faithful  Servant  and  Apprentice, 


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122  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

shall  bear  and  behave  himself  towards  bis  said 
Master  and  Mistress  during  the  full  Term  of  five 
Years  and  four  months  Commencing  as  aforesaid. 

AND  THE  SAID  Benj'  Gott  for  himself  Doth 
Covenant  Promise,  Grant  and  Agree  unto,  and  with 
him  said  Apprentice  in  Manner  and  Form  follow- 
ing, THAT  IS  TO  SAY,  That  he  will  teach  the  said 
Apprentice  or  cause  him  to  be  Taught  by  the  best 
Ways  and  Means  that  he  may  or  can,  the  Trade, 
Art  or  Mystery  of  a  Physician  according  to  his  own 
best  skil  and  judgm't  (if  said  Apprentice  be  capable 
to  learn)  and  will  Find  and  Provide  for  unto  said 
Apprentice,  good  and  sufficient  meat  Drink  washing 
and  lodging  During  said  Term  both  in  sickness  and 
in  health  —  his  Mother  all  said  Term  finding  said 
apprentice  all  his  Cloathing  of  all  sorts  fitting  for 
an  Apprentice  during  said  Term;  and  at  the  End 
of  said  Term,  to  dismiss  said  Apprentice  with  Good 
skill  in  arithmetick  Lattin  and  also  in  the  Greek 
through  the  Greek  Grammar. 

IN  TESTIMONY  WHEREOF,  The  said  Parties 
to  these  present  Indentures  have  interchangeably 
set  their  Hands  and  Seals,  in  the  Eighth  Day  of 
January  —  In  the  seventh  Year  of  the  Reign  of 
Our  Sovereign  Lord  George  ye  second  by  the  Grace 
of  God,  King  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Ireland; 
And  in  the  Year  of  Our  Lord,  One  Thousand  Seven 
Hundred  and  thirty  three  four  — 

Signed,  Sealed  and  Delivered 

in  Presence  of  Holuster  Bakes 

John  Mead  Benj*  Wood 

Elizabeth  Woods  Benj*  Gott 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  123 

This  agreement  makes  it  clear  that  five  years 
and  four  months  spent  in  doing  chores,  both 
household  and  professional,  was  Hollister  Ba- 
ker's payment  to  Doctor  Gott  for  his  medical 
instruction  —  as  it  was  also  the  medical  course 
of  the  apprentice.  This  was  the  custom  of  the 
day;  Doctor  Gott  had  served  Doctor  Wallis 
in  the  same  way,  and  youths  so  continued  to 
serve  even  after  the  first  medical  school  on 
the  continent,  that  of  Philadelphia,  had  been 
founded  in  1765. 

Horace  Davis,  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for 
these  facts  about  the  Gott  family,  has  enter- 
tainingly pictured 1  the  life  which  young  Baker 
may  have  lived  while  fulfilling  the  terms  of  his 
apprenticeship.  In  so  small  a  town  as  Marl- 
boro, Mr.  Davis  conjectures,  there  would 
probably  have  been  no  drug-shop,  so  that  in 
one  of  the  little  front  rooms  of  the  doctor's 
house  some  small  store  would  doubtless  have 
been  kept  of  such  things  as  opium,  antimony, 
Peruvian  bark,  mercury,  nitre,  sulphur,  and 
ipecac,  as  well  as  of  the  reliable  native  reme- 
dies, elder,  yellow  dock,  slippery  elm,  snake- 
root,  saffron,  and  the  rest.  "  Among  these 
emblems  of  his  future  calling,  Baker,"  he 
thinks,  "  very  likely  passed  a  good  share  of  his 
time. 

"  He  would  come  down  from  his  plain  quarters 

"  Transactions  Colonial  Society  of  Massachusetts,  Vol.  XII. 


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124  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

in  the  attic  early  in  the  morning  and  start  the 
fire  while  Mrs.  Gott  attended  to  the  children; 
then  he  would  go  out  and  look  after  the  Doctor's 
horse.  Before  breakfast  would  come  family 
prayers,  when,  according  to  tradition,  the  Doctor 
used  to  read  from  his  Latin  Bible.  After  break- 
fast he  would  saddle  the  Doctor's  horse  and 
bring  him  round  to  the  front  door,  when  his 
master  would  throw  the  saddle-bags  over  his 
back,  stuffed  with  such  medicines  or  instru- 
ments as  the  morning's  work  required,  and  ride 
away  to  his  patients.  Then  perhaps  Hollister 
would  sit  down  to  his  '  arithmetick,  Lattin, 
and  Greek  Grammar ',  possibly  dipping  into 
some  of  the  medical  books  which  adorned  the 
Doctor's  shelves. 

"  After  the  midday  dinner,  perhaps  the  Doc- 
tor would  take  his  apprentice  with  him  to  visit 
some  patient  in  the  village  or  send  him  on  the 
old  mare  with  remedies  to  some  distant  invalid, 
whom  his  master  was  unable  to  attend  in  per- 
son. And  when  the  day's  work  was  done  the 
Doctor  would  look  after  the  boy's  studies  and 
impart  to  him  some  knowledge  of  that  '  art, 
trade  and  mystery  *  which  the  boy  was  anxious 
to  grasp.  If  the  Doctor  was  kind  and  his  mis- 
tress gentle,  the  lad's  life  might  be  very  pleasant. 
.  .  .  But  it  is  certainly  a  far  cry  from  the 
splendors  of  modern  medical  education  to  this 
solitary  boy  serving  his  master  and    mistress 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  125 

under  a  five  year  indenture  for  his  board,  lodging 
and  tuition." 

This  particular  doctor  appears  to  have  been 
very  kind,  it  his  funeral  notice,  published  in 
the  Boston  News-Letter  of  August  1,  1751,  may 
be  trusted: 

"  Marlborough,  July  27,  1751.  On  the  25th 
deceased,  and  this  Day  decently  interr'd,  Dr. 
Benjamin  Gott,  a  learned  and  useful  Physician 
and  Surgeon: '  the  Loss  of  this  Gentleman  is 
the  more  bewail'd  in  these  Parts,  as  he  was  not 
only  a  Lover  of  Learning  and  learned  Men,  and 
very  hospitable  and  generous;  but  as  he  was 
peculiarly  faithful  to  his  Patients,  moderate  in 
his  Demands,  and  charitable  to  the  Poor;  a 
Character  very  imitable  by  all  in  the  Faculty; 
and  was  taken  off  in  the  very  Meridian  of  Life, 
being  but  in  the  46th  Year  of  his  Age." 

The  career  of  another  typical  old-time 
physician  has  been  sketched  by  Mrs.  Harriette 
M.  Forbes  in  her  "  Hundredth  Town."  The 
original  of  the  picture  is  Doctor  Ball  of  North- 
borough,  Massachusetts,  whose  procedure  on 
visiting  the  sick  was  usually  as  follows:  "  First 
he  bled  the  arm,  then  gave  a  severe  emetic, 

1  The  excellent  Doctor  Gott,  having  acquired  his  profession  by 
means  of  apprenticeship,  was,  of  course,  not  really  entitled  to  be 
called  doctor.  Even  graduates  in  medicine  were  from  1768  to  1701 
"to  content  themselves  with  the  decree  M.  B.,  Bachelor  of 
re  necessary ,  at  Phila- 
!y  to  be  entitled  to  be 
i,  M.  D.  was  the  only 


Medicine.  Three  years  of  further  study  were  necessary,  at  Phila- 
delphia, prior  to  1792.  if  a  man  wished  really  to  be  entitled  to  be 
called  Doctor  of  Medicine.     From  1792  on,  M.  D.  was  the  only 


degree  given. 


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126  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

followed  by  doses  of  calomel  and  jalap.  In  his 
'  Resipee  Book  '  was  to  be  found  the  following 
'  Receipt  to  the  Scratches  *,  '  one  qrt  fishworms 
washed  clean,  one  pound  hog's  lard  stewed  to- 
gether, filtered  through  a  strainer  &  add  half- 
pint  oil  turpentine,  half  pint  good  brandy  sim- 
mer it  well  &  is  fit  for  use/  .  .  .  His  directions 
to  his  patients  were  usually  given  in  about  the 
same  formula,  and  have  a  suggestion  of  con- 
stant use  of  the  gun,  as  well  as  plenty  of  shot. 
He  would  say:  '  Take  a  little  of  this  ere  and  a 
little  of  that  air,  put  it  in  a  jug  before  the  fire, 
stir  it  up  with  your  little  finger,  and  take  it 
when  you  are  warm,  hot,  cold,  or  feverish.*  " 

Doctor  Ball  was  a  strong  believer  in  the  mind 
as  a  help  or  hindrance  to  recovery,  as  in  his 
youth,  he  had  been  made  almost  ill  by  being  told 
that  the  perfectly  good  beef  on  which  he  was 
dining  was  horse-meat. 

"  Not  long  after  this,"  he  tells  us,  "  I  at- 
tended a  Patient  a  yong  man  about  18  or  19 
years  old,  in  another  town,  sick  with  the  scar- 
let-fever and  throat  distemper  (Scarlatina  Angi- 
nosa).  I  revisited  him  on  Sunday  morning.  I 
told  him  he  was  better,  his  disorder  had  turned, 
he  was  going  well.  I  saw  nothing  butt  that  he 
might  recover  soon.  I  had  business  further 
along,  and  on  my  return,  about  sunset,  I  called 
again  and  beheld  the  family  and  neighbors  ware 
standing  around  in  a  large  room,  seeing  the 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  127 

patient  die.  I  spoke  to  his  mother,  and  asked 
her  what  was  the  matter.  0  said  she  Joel  is 
worse.  I  then  turned  to  my  Pupil  and  sayes 
what  can  this  mean.  He  said  I  dont  know. 
I  am  shure  he  says  he  was  going  well  when  we 
were  here  in  the  morning. 

"  I  then  turned  again  to  his  mother  and  asked 
her  what  had  taken  place.  O,  she  said,  Joel 
has  been  growing  worse  ever  since  you  left  in 
the  morning,  she  said  the  Minister  called  soon 
after  I  left,  and  he  said  he  might  live  till  night, 
but  could  not  probably  live  till  tomorrow 
morning,  and  she  thought  it  her  duty  to  let  her 
son  know  the  near  approach  of  death.  I  went 
to  the  bed-side  and  I  veriyly  thought  him  to 
be  a  dicing,  he  had  a  deathly  pult  (subsutus 
tendinum)  spasmodick  affection  of  the  face 
and  jaws,  indeede  the  whole  system  was  gen- 
erally convulsed.  I  thought  of  the  horse-beefe. 
I  sayes  to  him  Joel,  I  guess  I  can  give  you  some- 
thing that  will  help  you.  I  perceived  he  had  his 
senses,  but  I  beleave  he  could  not  speak."  He 
could  swallow  however,  and  when  plied  with 
cordial  and  with  hope  by  the  old  doctor,  was 
quickly  pulled  back  from  what  had  bidden  fair 
to  be  a  death  from  fright. 

Newport,  Rhode  Island,  was  the  cradle  of 
the  first  medical  course  in  the  country,  and 
many  celebrated  physicians  and  surgeons  lived 
and  practiced  within  the  boundaries  of  the  old 


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128  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

town.  Newport  was,  indeed,  founded  by  a 
physician  named  John  Clarke,  who  united 
with  Roger  Williams  in  obtaining  from  Charles 
II  a  charter  conferring  greater  civil  and  re- 
ligious privileges  than  had  been  granted  to  any 
other  province.  William  Hunter  and  Thomas 
Moffat,  both  graduates  of  the  famous  Edin- 
burgh University  of  Medicine,  came  to  New- 
port about  1750,  and  there,  during  1754,  1755, 
and  1756,  Doctor  Hunter  gave  the  first  course 
of  medical  lectures  ever  delivered  in  America, 
Many  youths  came  from  the  other  colonies  to 
profit  by  these  lectures  and,  had  not  the  dis- 
turbances of  the  Revolution  broken  up  the 
school,  Rhode  Island  would  have  attained  great 
distinction  at  an  early  date  as  a  source  of  medi- 
cal instruction.  Doctor  Hunter  had  the  largest 
medical  library  in  New  England,  a  portion  of 
which  was  given  by  his  son,  the  Honorable 
William  Hunter,  to  Brown  University.  An- 
other early  Newport  physician  was  Doctor 
Vigneron,  who  reached  the  province  about  1690, 
lived  to  be  ninety-five,  and  was  the  father  of  so 
large  a  family  that  it  was  often  laughingly  said 
of  him  that  he  peopled  the  town.  William  Vi- 
gneron Taylor,  one  of  his  descendants,  was  a 
lieutenant  on  Oliver  Hazard  Perry's  ship  at 
the  battle  of  Lake  Erie.  The  father  of  Cap- 
tain Perry's  wife,  Doctor  Benjamin  Mason,  also 
studied  medicine  in  Europe  and  was  a  promi- 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  129 

nent  member  of  the  profession  in  Rhode  Is- 
land. 

Newport  is  justly  proud  of  its  progressive 
spirit  in  matters  relating  to  health.  Doctor 
Waterhouse  has  pointed  out  that  while  Boston 
was  pelting  Doctor  Boylston  with  stones  as 
he  passed  in  the  streets  and  breaking  his  win- 
dows for  introducing  inoculation  for  smallpox, 
Rhode  Island  was  inoculating  patients  without 
opposition  and  getting  ready  to  set  up  (in  1798) 
what  was  then  a  very  great  novelty,  a  Board  of 
Health.  The  example  of  Newport  in  this  mat- 
ter of  legislating  for  health  was  not  followed  in 
any  other  locality  for  many  years. 

Windsor,  Connecticut,  had  several  early  phy- 
sicians of  great  skill  and  reputation,  among 
them  Doctor  Alexander  Wolcott,  son  of  Gov- 
ernor Roger  Wolcott  and  great-grandson  of  Mr. 
Henry  Wolcott,  the  Pilgrim.  Doctor  Wolcott 
was  graduated  from  Yale  College  in  1731  and 
studied  medicine  under  Doctor  Norman  Morri- 
son of  Hartford.  At  Louisburg  and  during  the 
Revolutionary  War,  Doctor  Wolcott  contributed 
notably  to  the  success  of  the  patriot  cause. 

Not  so  did  Doctor  Elihu  Tudor  of  this  same 
town.  Doctor  Tudor  was  graduated  from  Yale 
in  1750,  studied  medicine  under  Doctor  Benja- 
min Gale  of  Killingsworth,  and  became  an  ex- 
cellent and  a  successful  physician.  It  did  not 
help  his  practice  in  Windsor  that  at  the  out- 


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130  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

break  of  the  Revolution  be  was  gravely  sus- 
pected of  being  favorable  to  the  British  gov- 
ernment. It  was  related  of  him  that  he  used  to 
have  two  teapots,  one  of  which  was  filled  with 
sage  tea  and  the  other  with  real  tea  —  which 
could  be  used  according  to  the  company  he  had 
at  his  table.  By  virtue  of  his  service  during 
the  French  and  Indian  War,  he  became  a  pen- 
sioner of  the  British  government;  but  when 
1825  dawned,  and  he  was  still  living  and  draw- 
ing his  annuity,  —  being  then  over  ninety  years 
old,  —  an  agent  of  the  mother  country  was  sent 
over  to  see  "  whether  the  old  cuss  was  really 
alive."  '  Doctor  Tudor  was  in  his  day  the  best 
surgeon  in  New  England,  in  recognition  of 
which  Dartmouth  College,  despite  his  politics, 
conferred  upon  him,  in  1790,  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Medicine. 

Windsor  can  boast,  also,  of  a  doctor  who 
had  been  a  slave,  one  Primus,  who  as  the  body- 
servant  of  Doctor  Wolcott  had  assisted  for  so 
many  years  in  the  preparation  of  medicines 
that  he  felt  quite  competent,  when  given  his 
freedom,  to  practice  by  himself  the  "  art  and 
mystery "  of  a  physician.  On  one  occasion, 
being  sent  for  to  visit  a  sick  child  in  West 
Windsor,  he  obeyed  the  summons  and  on  his 
way  home  rapped  at  the  door  of  his  old  master. 
When  Doctor  Wolcott  came  to  see  what  was 

1  Stiles'  "  History  of  Windsor,  Connecticut." 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  131 

wanted,  the  negro  said:  "  I  just  called  to  say 
that  that  is  a  very  simple  case  over  there,  and 
that  I  told  the  child's  mother  she  need  not 
have  sent  so  far  for  a  doctor  —  that  you  would 
have  done  just  as  well  as  any  one  else." 

Connecticut  physicians  seem  to  have  at- 
tained considerable  esprit  de  corps  by  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  the  Connecticut 
Courant  of  1784,  I  find,  under  date  of  July  13, 
a  notice  to  the  effect  that  a  meeting  of  their 
body  will  be  held  on  August  2  at  the  house  of 
Mr.  David  Buel,  Litchfield.  Possibly  this 
meeting  was  called  to  cope  with  such  abuses  as 
must  have  followed  this  advertisement,  to  be 
found  in  the  same  paper  some  four  years  earlier: 

"  Just  Published 
"  And  to  be  sold  by  the  Printers  hereof 
"  A  new  edition,  neatly  bound  of  Domestic 
Medicine:  Or  the  Family  Physician:  Being  an 
Attempt  to  render  the  Medical  Art  more  gen- 
erally useful  by  showing  people  what  is  in 
their  own  Power,  both  with  respect  to  the  Pre- 
vention and  Cure  of  Diseases.  .  .  .  " 

A  very  distinguished  Boston  physician  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution  was  Doctor  James 
Lloyd,  who  was  born  March  14,  1728,  and 
died  in  1810.    He  was  a  close  friend  of  Sir  Will- 


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132  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

iam  Howe  and  of  Earl  Percy,  the  latter  living 
for  a  time,  while  in  Boston,  at  his  house.  In 
religion  Doctor  Lloyd  was  an  Episcopalian, — 
one  of  those  who  protested  vigorously  against 
the  alteration  of  the  liturgy  at  King's  Chapel. 
But  though  the  American  government  knew 
him  to  be  a  Tory,  he  was  never  molested,  and 
for  many  years  after  the  Revolution  continued 
to  be  one  of  Boston's  most  popular  physicians. 
One  of  the  most  high-priced,  also!  For  he 
charged  the  exorbitant  fee  of  half  a  dollar  a 
visit,  where  most  of  the  city  doctors  were  glad 
to  come  as  often  as  they  were  called  for  a  shil- 
ling and  sixpence.  Anna  Green  Winslow  speaks 
in  her  diary  of  his  "  bringing  little  master  to 
town "  in  1771 ;  for  this  service  his  charge 
would  have  been  a  guinea,  inasmuch  as  he  was 
a  specialist  in  "  baby  cases." 

Most  of  the  early  physicians  were  shockingly 
underpaid.1  In  Hadley  and  in  Northampton, 
Massachusetts,  they  received  but  sixpence  a 
visit  in  1730,  and  their  fee  had  risen  no  higher 
than  eightpence  by  Revolutionary  days.  A 
blood-letting  or  the  extraction  of  a  tooth  by 
the  agonizing  method  then  in.  vogue  cost  the 

1 1n  Boston,  prior  to  1782,  the  regular  doctor's  foe  wbb  from  one 
shilling  sixpence.,  to  two  shillings,  the  latter  charge  being  made  only 
to  "  such  as  were  in  high  life.  Later  a  club  of  leading  physicians 
fixed  the  common  fee  at  fifty  cents,  permitting  one  dollar  to  be 
charged  for  a  visit  made  in  consultation,  double  rates  for  night  calls, 
and  a  fee  of  six  dollars  for  midwifery.  See  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  Proceedings  for  1863. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  133 

sufferer  etghtpence  extra.  The  medicines  given 
by  these  early  doctors  were  exceedingly  power- 
ful and  were  likely  to  contain  a  great  deal  of 
mercury.  Hence  the  very  early  decay  of  the 
teeth,  a  universal  complaint  which  made  possi- 
ble such  an  advertisement  as  the  following  in 
the  Boston  Evening  Post  of  September  36,  1768: 

"  Whereas  many  Persons  are  so  unfortunate 
as  to  lose  their  Fore  Teeth  by  Accident  or 
Otherways  to  their  great  Detriment  not  only 
in  looks  but  in  speaking  both  in  public  and 
private.  This  is  to  inform  all  such  that  they 
can  have  them  replaced  with  Artificial  Ones 
that  look  as  well  as  the  Natural  and  answer  the 
End  of  Speaking  by  Paul  Revere  Goldsmith 
near  the  head  of  Dr.  Clarkes  wharf.  All  Per- 
sons who  have  had  false  Teeth  Fixed  by  Mr. 
Jos.  Baker  Surgeon  Dentist  and  They  have 
got  loose  as  they  will  in  Time  may  have  them 
fastened  by  above  said  Revere  who  lernt  the 
method  of  fixing  them  from  Mr.  Baker." 

The  teeth  in  which  Paul  Revere  dealt  were 
frankly  artificial ;  his  advertisement  is  not 
nearly  so  gruesome,  therefore,  as  this  from  the 
Connecticut  Courant  of  August  17,  1795:  "A 
generous  price  paid  for  Human  Front  Teeth 
perfectly  sound,  by  Dr.  Skinner."  Appar- 
ently this  "  doctor  "  did  not  shrink,  when  duty 
called,  from  the  very  disagreeable  task  of  "  in- 
grafting "  teeth,  a  practice  then  much  in  vogue, 


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134  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

by  which  "  live  teeth  "  were  inserted  in  the 
mouths  of  those  able  to  pay  for  them,  —  and 
willing  to  wear  them. 

None  of  the  professions  was  quite  so  slow  in 
becoming  standardized  as  that  of  the  physician. 
That  practitioners  of  medicine  were  not  uni- 
versally recognized  as  professional  men,  even 
as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
is  clear  from  the  ranking  given  in  the  college 
catalogues  to  doctors'  sons.  Thus  Clement 
Sumner,  son  of  a  reputable  physician,  is  placed 
number  thirty  in  the  Yale  College  catalogue 
of  1788;  this,  too,  where  there  were  only  forty- 
three  students  in  the  whole  class.  The  truth 
is  that  a  very  large  number  of  quack  doctors 
were  abroad  in  the  land,  and  no  simple  method 
had  yet  been  found  of  distinguishing  good 
men  from  charlatans.  In  the  Old  Farmer's  Al- 
manack for  1806,  we  find  Mr.  Thomas  writing: 
"  There  are  a  great  many  asses  without  long 
ears.  Quack,  Quack,  went  the  ducks,  as  Doc- 
tor Motherwort  rode  by  with  his  saddle-bags 
stuffed  with  maiden-hair  and  golden-rod.  Don't 
let  your  wife  send  Tommy  to  the  academy  sis 
weeks  and  make  a  novice  of  him." 

And  in  the  1813  issue  of  this  same  famous 
publication,  there  is  a  drastic  description  of 
"  the  famous  Dr.  Dolt ":  "A  larnt  man  is  the 
doctor.  Once  he  was  a  simple  knight  of  the 
lapstone  and  pegging  awl;  but  now  he  is  blaz- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  135 

oned  in  the  first  orders  of  quack  heraldry. 
The  mighty  cures  of  the  doctor  are  known  far 
round.  He  is  always  sure  to  kill  the  disorder, 
although  in  effecting  this  he  sometimes  kills 
the  patient." 

Against  lawyers  the  useful  Mr.  Thomas  also 
inveighed;  and  there  was  need  of  it.  For  in 
many  country  towns  there  was  a  perfect  pest 
of  men  who  battened  on  the  quarrelsomeness  of 
their  neighbors.  John  Adams,  in  1760,  speaks 
of  "  the  multiplicity  of  pettifoggers  "  in  Brain- 
tree,  a  town  which  had  become  proverbial  for 
litigation,  and  specifies  one  *'  Captain  H." 
who,  he  says,  "  has  given  out  that  he  is  a  sworn 
attorney  till  nine-tenths  of  this  town  really 
believe  it."  Henry  Wansey,  who  traveled 
through  New  England  in  1794,  wrote  that 
"  the  best  houses  in  Connecticut  are  inhabited 
by  lawyers."  Verily  a  great  change  had  come 
about  since  the  days  when  Thomas  Lechford 
found  it  so  hard  to  practice  his  profession  in 
Boston  that  he  was  constrained  to  warn  the 
colonists  not  to  "  despise  learning,  nor  the 
worthy  lawyers  of  either  gown  (civil  or  eccle- 
siastical) lest  you  repent  too  late."  * 

Driven  from  England  for  engaging  in  the 
trial  of  the  great  Prynne,  Lechford  arrived  in 
Boston  in  1688  and  began  to  keep  that  "  Note- 
Book  "  by  means  of  which  many  facts  of  great 

1 "  Plaine  Dealing,"  1642,  p.  28. 


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136  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

value  have  been  added  to  our  knowledge  of 
old  New  England.  But  he  soon  became  a 
persona  non  grata  in  the  colonies.  It  was  the 
policy  of  the  clergy  to  suppress  the  study  of 
law l  in  order  that  their  own  importance  and 
power  should  in  no  way  be  curtailed.  A  civil 
magistrate  was  thought  to  need  no  special 
training  in  order  to  perform  his  duty  properly, 
and  a  judge  was  expected  to  take  his  law  from 
those  who  expounded  the  Word  of  God.  Stough- 
ton,  the  first  chief  justice  in  Massachusetts, 
who  was  appointed  by  Phips,  probably  at  the 
instigation  of  Increase  Mather,  had  been  bred 
for  the  church  and  had  absolutely  no  training 
in  law.  And  Sewall,  as  we  know,  was  much 
more  a  minister  and  a  merchant  than  a  lawyer. 
Naturally,  there  was  no  place  in  such  a  social 
scheme  for  lawyers  and  law-students. 

Yet  in  1725  Jeremiah  Gridley  graduated 
from  Harvard,  and  he,  as  Brooks  Adams  points 
out,8  may  be  fairly  said  to  have  been  the  pro- 
genitor of  a  famous  race.  For  "  long  before 
the  Revolution,  men  like  Prat,  Otis  and  John 
Adams  could  well  have  held  their  own  before 
any  court  of  Common  Law  that  ever  sat." 

No  longer  now  must  accused  persons  be 
condemned,  as  were  the  witches,  undefended 
by  those  skilled  in  argument  and  in  the  presen- 

1  Connecticut,  in  1730,  limited  to  eleven  the  number  of  lawyers 
for  that  whole  colony. 

3  la  "  The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts." 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  137 

tation  of  a  case.  When,  at  the  time  of  the 
Boston  Massacre,  Captain  Preston  and  his 
men  were  indicted  for  murder,  John  Adams 
and  Josiah  Quincy,  though  heart  and  soul  de- 
voted to  the  cause  of  the  people,  unhesitatingly 
accepted  their  defense,  with  the  result  that,  in 
spite  of  popular  sentiment  against  them,  Pres- 
ton and  his  men  were  patiently  tried  according 
to  the  law  and  the  evidence.  All  that  skill, 
learning,  and  courage  could  do  for  them  was 
done  and  an  impartial  court  brought  in  a  ver- 
dict of  Not  Guilty.  The  law  as  a  profession 
during  this  trial  came  into  its  own. 

Next  to  the  three  learned  professions  should 
come  that  of  the  teacher;  but  this  vocation 
was  not  at  all  highly  regarded,  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  rank  assigned  to  schoolmasters'  sons 
in  the  college  catalogues  of  early  days.  Henry 
Rust,  son  of  a  schoolmaster  in  Ipswich,  Massa- 
chusetts, stands  last  in  the  class  of  1707  at  Har- 
vard! Of  school-teaching,  as  of  doctoring,  it 
was  true  at  this  time  that  the  profession  had 
not  become  standardized. 

Inn-keeping,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  most 
respectable  occupation.  In  several  of  the  early 
college  catalogues  sons  of  innkeepers  may  be 
found  taking  precedence  of  ministers'  sons! 
This  was  because  an  innkeeper  had  to  be  as 
moral  as  a  minister  and  possess  property  be- 
sides.   What  was  required  of  a  landlord  in 


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138  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

those  early  days  is  shown  by  the  bond  of  Colonel 
Thomas  Howe,  who  kept  a  public  house  in 
Marlborough  in  1696.  This  instrument  stipu- 
lates that  "  he  shall  not  suffer  to  have  any 
playing  at  cards,  dice,  tally,  bowls,  ninepins, 
billiards,  or  any  other  unlawful  game  or  games 
in  bis  said  house,  or  yard  or  gardens  or  back- 
side, nor  shall  suffer  to  remain  in  his  house 
any  person  or  persons,  not  being  his  own  family, 
on  Saturday  night  after  dark,  or  on  the  Sab- 
bath days,  or  during  the  time  of  God's  Public 
Worship;  nor  shall  he  entertain  as  lodgers  in 
his  house  any  strangers  men  or  women,  above 
the  space  of  forty-eight  hours,  but  such  whose 
names  and  surnames  he  shall  deliver  to  one 
of  the  selectmen  or  constables  of  the  town, 
unless  they  shall  be  such  as  he  very  well  know- 
eth,  and  will  ensure  for  his  or  their  forthcoming 
—  nor  shall  sell  any  wine  to  the  Indians  or  ne- 
groes, nor  suffer  any  children  or  servant,  or 
other  person  to  remain  in  his  house,  tippling 
or  drinking  after  nine  o'clock  in  the  night  — 
nor  shall  buy  or  take  to  preserve  any  stolen 
goods,  nor  willingly  or  knowingly  harbor  in 
his  house,  barn,  stable  or  otherwhere,  any 
rogues,  vagabonds,  thieves,  sturdy  beggars, 
masterless  men  and  women,  or  other  notori- 
ous offenders  whatsoever  —  nor  shall  any  per- 
son or  persons  whatsoever,  sell  or  utter  any 
wine,  beer,  ale,  cider,  rum,  brandy,  or  other 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  139 

liquors  by  defaulting  or  by  color  of  his  license  — 
nor  shall  entertain  any  person  or  persons  to 
whom  he  shall  be  prohibited  by  law,  or  by  any 
one  of  the  magistrates  of  the  county,  as  per- 
sons of  jolly  conversation  or  given  to  tippling." 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  tavern-keepers  of 
the  early  days  were,  of  necessity,  persons  of 
conscience  and  quality.  Nearly  all  of  them 
had  a  military  title,  and  that  in  a  day  when 
titles  meant  something.  The  yeoman  in  old 
New  England  was  called  "  goodman  ",  and  his 
spouse  was  a  "  goodwife."  The  great  majority 
of  the  colonists  were  addressed  as  "  Goodman  ", 
only  one  freeman  in  fourteen,  in  the  Massa- 
chusetts of  1649,  having  the  title  of  "  Mr.", 
which  originally  meant  that  the  person  thus 
designated  was  a  college  graduate.  The  wife 
and  daughter  of  a  Master  of  Arts,  or  a  Mr.,  be- 
came Mistress  or  "Mrs."  Not  until  after  1720 
was  "  Miss  "  used  to  indicate  any  young  female. 

The  Revolution  necessarily  did  away  with 
finely  drawn  class  distinctions.  Such  social 
classifications  as  the  old  regime  fostered  were 
bound  to  break  down  when  a  Franklin  was 
the  son  of  a  tallow-chandler.  The  distinc- 
tion of  the  "  gentleman  "  was  charily  recog- 
nized now;  that  John  Adams  used  the  term  oc- 
casionally after  the  Revolution  has  been  made 
a  matter  of  repeated  comment. 

Printing,  which  led  then  as  it  often  does  to- 


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140 


SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 


day  to  journalism  and  allied  activities,  attracted 
some  of  the  brightest  minds.  How  Franklin 
chose  this  for  his  profession  we  have  all  read  in 
the  "  Autobiography  ";  in  his  case  adopting  the 
trade  of  a  printer  ended  by  his  becoming  a  favor- 
ite at  the  Court  of  France.  Robert  Bailey 
Thomas  was  another  bright  New  England  boy 
who  became  a  printer;  he  was  taught  penman- 
ship by  Doctor  T.  Allen  of  Spencer,  Massachu- 
setts, who  had  the  reputation  of  "  writing  the 
most  beautiful  copy  hand  of  any  person  in 
the  country."  He  progressed  through  school- 
mastering  and  the  pursuit  of  mathematics  to 
the  business  of  bookbinding  and  publishing, 
of  which,  as  we  know,  he  made  an  enormous 
success.  From  the  first  issue  of  his  Farmer's 
Almanack  in  1793,  Thomas  was  a  bookseller 
too,  as  well  as  a  publisher,  dispensing  quite  an 
astonishing  variety  of  books  from  liis  little 
shop  in  Spencer.  Booksellers  abounded  in 
the  country  towns;  and  what  is  more,  in  the 
last  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth,  there  were  local 
presses  without  number,  and  cheap  copies  of 
standard  English  authors  were  frequently  re- 
printed in  places  like  Exeter,  Brattleboro, 
Newburyport,  Salem,  and  New  Bedford. 

With  so  many  almanacs  abroad  in  the  land, 
"  astrologers  "  were  necessarily  in  considerable 
demand.     Mr.  Thomas  kept  his  Almanac  free 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  141 

from  astrology,  but  most  earlier  almanac- 
makers  were  less  scrupulous,  and  many  a  man 
with  more  cleverness  than  conscience  battened 
through  this  medium  on  the  credibility  of  the 
reading  public.  In  the  diary  of  President 
Stiles  of  Yale  College,  there  is  a  casual  refer- 
ence to  one  of  these  men  when,  under  date  of 
June  13,  1773,  he  mentions,  as  lately  dead, 
"  Mr.  Stafford  of  Tiverton  ",  who  "  was  wont 
to  tell  where  lost  things  might  be  found,  and 
what  day,  hour,  and  minute  was  fortunate  for 
vessels  to  sail." 

When  a  youth  wanted  to  be  an  artist,  he 
was  discouraged  violently.  William  Kheeland, 
Harvard  tutor,  wrote  Governor  Trumbull  about 
his  son:  "  I  find  he  has  a  natural  genius  and 
disposition  for  limning.  As  a  knowledge  of 
that  art  will  probably  be  of  no  use  to  him  I 
submit  to  your  consideration  whether  it  would 
not  be  best  to  give  him  a  turn  to  the  study  of 
perspective,  a  branch  of  mathematics  the  knowl- 
edge of  which  will  at  least  be  a  genteel  accom- 
plishment." 

The  fanner's  son  adopted,  quite  naturally, 
the  work  of  his  father.  And  the  same  thing 
was  frequently  true  of  the  sons  of  men  in  the 
various  trades.  Benjamin  Franklin  had  hard 
work  to  avoid  becoming  a  tallow-chandler  — 
like  his  father.  Blacksmiths  were  long  in  great 
demand,  and  special  inducements  were  often 


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142 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


held  out  to  young  men  to  adopt  this  calling. 
For  blacksmiths  made  nails  as  well  as  shod 
horses.  "  Nailer  Tom  ",  as  Thomas  B.  Hazard, 
who  lived  in  Peace  Dale,  Rhode  Island,  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was 
called  —  to  distinguish  him  from  the  various 
other  Tom  Hazards  of  his  time  —  was  an  ex< 
ceedingly  interesting  character. 

The  term  of  an  apprentice  in  these  and 
allied  trades  was  generally  for  seven  years. 
From  the  indenture  of  an  apprentice  to  whom 
Samuel  Williams  and  wife  of  Roxbury  en- 
gaged, about  1678,  to  teach  the  "art,  trade, 
mistry  and  science  "  of  shoemaking,  we  read, 
after  the  enumeration  of  conditions  almost 
identical  with  those  required  of  the  lad  who 
was  learning  to  be  a  doctor  :  "  and  at  the  end 
of  six  years  they  will  give  their  said  apprentice 
doubell  apparell,  one  suit  for  the  Lord's  day 
and  one  suit  for  the  working  days  neet  an 
comely  for  one  of  his  degree  and  calling." 

In  the  seaboard  towns  the  trade  of  "  mar- 
riner "  was  naturally  of  strong  appeal.  The 
apprentice  term  in  this  calling  was  four  years, 
and  the  wages  of  seamen  were  unusually  good. 
A  captain  ordinarily  got  about  six  pounds  a 
month,  the  chief  mate  four  pounds,  and  the 
men  from  £l  15s.  to  £2  15s.  a  month.  No 
wonder  lads  ran  away  to  sea,  when  they  could 
have   adventure   and   such   alluring   wages   as 


r 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  143 

this  at  the  end  of  four  years,  while  a  gold- 
smith's apprentice,  in  1644,  had  to  promise  to 
serve  twelve  years  for  meat,  drink,  and  ap- 
parel only,  and  receive  at  the  end  of  his  term 
.  the  meager  sum  of  three  pounds.1 

One  interesting  New  England  industry, 
which  disappeared  when  the  coming  of  the 
railroad  brought  western  competition  to  our 
doors,  was  the  raising  of  "  stall-fed  oxen  "  for 
the  city  market.  No  beef  brought  higher  prices 
on  the  foot  than  that  driven  from  the  barn- 
yards of  old  Deerfield  Street,  and  the  passing  of 
this  business  and  of  the  farm  boy  who  lived  by 
it  makes  a  very  interesting  story  s  as  told  by 
Deerfield's  historian,  George  Sheldon.  In 
early  days  it  was  an  unheard-of  thing  for  oxen 
to  be  "  sent  to  market "  which  had  not  been 
through  a  course  of  stall-feeding  in  some  of 
the  valley  towns.  Stall-feeding  grew  to  be 
an  exact  science;  the  whole  winter  was  "  de- 
voted "  —  and  Mr.  Sheldon  insists  that  he 
uses  this  word  advisedly  —  to  the  care  of  the 
stock,  which  had  been  acquired  in  the  fall  at 
one  of  the  hill  towns  on  the  west  or  north. 
"  Nothing  was  allowed  to  interfere  with  the 
regular  program  of  the  day.  For  it  was  a 
cardinal  doctrine  of  the  feeders  that  the  more 
comfortable  and  happy  the  animals  were  made 


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144  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

the  better  the  results."  Naturally  this  gave 
the  farm  boy  plenty  to  do.  For,  after  the  oxen 
had  been  carefully  mated,  their  quarters  had 
to  be  kept  scrupulously  clean,  and  feed,  drink, 
air,  and  exercise  had  to  be  provided  for  them 
with  undeviating  regularity. 

The  great  moment  for  the  farm  boy  came, 
however,  with  the  Monday  morning  journey 
to  Brighton.  Often  this  spring  expedition 
Boston-wards  was  the  country  lad's  first  ven- 
ture into  the  outside  world,  and,  though  he 
got  little  or  no  pay  beyond  his  expenses  on  the 
road  as  he  helped  drive  the  cattle  to  their  fate, 
there  was  great  eagerness  to  obtain  this  peep 
into  the  great  beyond.  Tearful  mothers,  as 
well  as  envious  young  brothers,  hung  out  of 
the  windows  as  the  lads  and  their  charges  set 
forth  from  home  under  the  care  of  an  experi- 
enced drover,  with  their  baggage  stowed  away 
in  leather  portmanteaus,  strapped  behind  the 
horns  of  some  of  the  leaders  of  the  drove,  where 
it  was  safe  from  molestation.  "  Wonderful 
were  the  stories  with  which  the  travelers  re- 
galed the  ears  of  their  envious  companions  on 
their  return  in  state  by  stage  coach.  These 
narratives  generally  bore  fruit  the  next  spring 
in  new  batches  of  pilgrims;  and,  incidentally, 
these  trips  to  the  city  often  led  to  ambitious 
aspirations,  to  permanent  migrations  —  and  a 
resultant  loss  to  the  valley." 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  IV 

"  'tending  meetin'  " 

THERE  might,  or  might  not  be,  a  school- 
house  in  the  early  New  England  villages. 
But  a  meeting-house  there  was  almost 
certain  to  be.  Scarcely  had  the  Pilgrims  landed 
at  Plymouth,  when  it  was  decided  that  wor- 
ship should  be  held  in  their  "  timber  fort  both 
strong  and  comely,  with  flat  roof  and  battle- 
ments." To  this  fort  every  Sunday  the  men 
and  women  made  their  way,  three  in  a  row, 
until  they  built  their  first  "  meeting-house " 
in  1648.  They  were  very  particular  about 
calling  it  a  meeting-house,  too,  and  so,  I  sup- 
pose, must  we  be.  Cotton  Mather  has  defended 
the  stand  they  took  in  this  matter  by  declaring 
that  he  "  found  no  just  ground  in  Scripture  to 
apply  such  a  trope  as  church  to  a  house  for 
public  assembly  ";  and  he  opposed  as  vigor- 
ously the  tendency  to  call  after  the  name  of  the 
congregation  who  worshipped  in  the  meeting- 
house the  meeting-house  in  which  they  wor- 
shipped, as  he  did  the  even  more  insidious  in- 
clination to  call  the  Sabbath  Sunday. 


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146  SOCIAL   LIFE  IN 

In  1675  it  was  enacted  that  a  meeting-house 
should  be  erected  in  every  town  in  the  colony; 
in  most  places,  as  in  Plymouth,  these  first 
houses  for  the  worship  of  God  were  very  rude 
affairs.  And  very  tiny,  too!  The  first  meeting- 
house in  Dedham  was  thirty-six  feet  long, 
twenty  feet  wide,  and  twelve  feet  high  "  in  the 
stud";  the  one  in  Medford  was  smaller  still, 
while  Haverhill  had  an  edifice  only  twenty- 
six  feet  long  and  twenty  feet  wide. 

The  "  Old  Ship  "  at  Hingham,  built  in  1681, 
represents  the  best  example  still  in  existence 
of  the  second  form  or  type  of  American  church 
architecture;  square  meeting-houses  of  this 
kind  soon  abounded  in  New  England.  The 
third  type,  and  that  to  which  we  all  cling  most 
lovingly,  is  exemplified  in  the  Old  South  Church 
of  Boston.  Many  similar  structures,  though 
built  of  wood  instead  of  brick,  crown  our  New 
England  hilltops  to  this  day. 

The  reason  why  the  meeting-house  was  so 
often  built  on  a  hill  was  because  it  was  highly 
valued  as  a  guide  for  travelers  making  their 
way  through  the  woods  and,  in  seacoast  towns, 
as  a  mark  for  sailors.  It  was  also  used  as  a 
m  watch-house,  from  which  the  approach  of  hos- 
tile Indians  could  be  discerned.  The  danger  of 
Sunday  attacks  from  the  Indians  was  a  very 
real  one  in  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
church  in  York,  Maine,  found    it    necessary, 


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OLD   NEW    ENGLAND  147 

indeed,  to  retain  until  1746  the  custom  of  car- 
rying arms  to  the  meeting-house,  to  guard 
against  raids  from  the  Indians  all  about  them. 

No  better  description  of  "  publique  worship  " 
in  a  large  town  in  the  very  early  days  of  the 
colony  can  be  found  than  that  given  us  by 
Thomas  Lechford,  the  first  Boston  lawyer,  in 
his  "  Plaine  dealing  or  Newes  from  New-Eng- 
land." 

"  Every  Sabbath  or  Lord's  Day  they  come 
together  at  Boston  by  wringing  of  a  bell,  about 
nine  of  the  clock  or  before.  The  Pastor  begins 
with  solemn  prayer  continuing  about  a  quarter 
of  an  hour.  The  Teacher  then  readeth  and  ex- 
poundeth  a  chapter;  Then  a  Psalme  is  sung 
whichever  one  the  ruling  Elder  dictates.  After 
that  the  Pastor  preacheth  a  Sermon,  and  some- 
times extempore  exhorts.  Then  the  Teacher 
continues  with  a  prayer  and  a  blessing.  About 
two  in  the  afternoone  they  repair  to  the  meet- 
ing-house againe;  and  the  pastor  begins,  as 
before  noone,  and  a  Psalm  being  sung,  the 
Teacher  makes  a  Sermon.  He  was  wont,  when 
I  came  first,  to  reade  and  expound  a  Chapter  also 
before  his  Sermon  in  the  afternoon.  After 
and  before  his  Sermon  he  prayed.  After  that^ 
ensueth  Baptisme,  if  there  be  any,  which  is 
done  by  either  Pastor  or  Teacher,  in  the  Dea- 
con's seate,  the  most  eminent  place  in  the 
Church,  next  under   the  Elders    seate.       The 


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148  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Pastor  most  commonly  makes  a  speech  or  ex- 
hortation to  the  Church  and  parents  concern- 
ing Baptisme,  and  then  prayeth  before  and 
after.  It  is  done  by  washing  or  sprinkling. 
One  of  the  parents  being  of  the  church  the 
child  may  be  baptized.  .  .  .  No  sureties  are  re- 
quired. 

"  Which  ended  follows  the  contribution,  one 
of  the  Deacons  saying  Brethren  of  the  congre- 
gation, now  there  is  time  left  for  contribution, 
wherefore  as  God  hath  prospered  you  so  freely 
offer.  Upon  some  extraordinary  occasions,  as 
building  and  repairing  of  Churches  and  meet- 
ing-houses or  other  necessities,  the  Ministers 
presse  a  liberall  contribution,  with  effectual 
exhortations  out  of  Scripture.  The  Magis- 
trates, and  chiefe  gentlemen  first,  and  then 
the  Elders,  and  all  the  congregation  of  men, 
and  most  of  them  that  are  not  of  the  Church, 
all  single  persons,  widows,  and  women  in  the 
absence  of  their  husbands  come  up  one  after 
another  one  way,  and  bring  their  offerings  to 
the  Deacon  at  his  seate,  and  put  it  into  a  box 
of  wood  for  the  purpose,  if  it  be  money  or  pa- 
pers; if  it  be  any  other  chattle,  they  set  it  or 
lay  it  downe  before  the  deacons,  and  so  passe 
another  way  to  their  seats  again." 

The  external  aspect  of  a  typical  country 
meeting-house  of  the  third  type  is  still  familiar 
to  us,  for  there  are  many  survivals  in  the  New 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  149 

England  of  to-day.  Occasionally,  too,  there 
may  be  found  a  structure  in  which  the  large 
square  pews,  the  high  pulpit  with  sounding- 
board  above  it  and  deacon's  seat  below  (con- 
veniently near  the  adjustable  shelf  which  served 
for  a  communion  table)  have  not  yet  given 
place  to  modern  equipment.  The  choir  in  such 
a  meeting-house  was  seated  in  the  middle  gal- 
lery, and  over  the  singers  there  ruled,  in  days  of 
yore,  a  chorister  who  "  set  the  tune  "  for  the 
different  parts  by  the  aid  of  a  wooden  pitch- 
pipe.  This  pitch-pipe  remained  in  use  until 
the  tuning-fork  was  invented.  Then  came 
successively  a  bassoon  in  the  church  and  a 
bass-viol  in  the  meeting-house,  until  organs 
supplanted  both. 

A  considerable  number  of  years,  however, 
is  covered  in  this  very  brief  summary  of  the 
history  of  church  music  in  New  England.  For 
though  "  the  first  organ  that  ever  pealed  to  the 
glory  of  God  in  this  country  "  was  imported 
from  London  in  1713  by  Mr.  Thomas  Brattle, 
one  of  the  founders  of  the  old  Brattle  Street 
Church  in  Boston,  organs  did  not  come  into 
general  use  until  a  much  later  day.  One  rea- 
son for  this  lay  in  the  fact  that  few  people  could 
play  this  instrument.  The  Brattle  organ,  left 
at  the  death  of  its  donor  to  the  Brattle  Street 
Church,  "  if  they  shall  accept  thereof  and 
within  a  year  after  my  decease  procure  a  sober 


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150  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

person  that  can  play  skilfully  thereon  with  a 
loud  noise ",  became  the  property  of  King's 
Chapel,  because  this  condition  of  a  skilful 
player  was  not  duly  met. 

Only  after  a  long  struggle  was  it  conceded  that 
organ  music  was  not  sacrilegious.  The  Scotch 
had  called  the  organ  a  "  kist  of  whistles  ",  and 
the  Puritan  named  this  instrument  the  "  devil's 
bagpipes."  The  use  of  organs  had  been  sternly 
prohibited  during  the  Puritan  reign  in  Eng- 
land, and  it  is  not  at  all  surprising,  therefore, 
that  Cotton  Mather  should  have  queried, 
in  his  "  Magnalia",  whether  "  such  music  may 
be  lawfully  introduced  in  the  worship  of  God 
in  the  churches  of  the  New  World."  He  could 
find  no  New  Testament  authority,  he  declared, 
for  countenancing  the  organ,  and  he  added: 
"  If  we  admit  instrumental  music  in  the  wor- 
ship of  God  how  can  we  resist  the  imposition 
of  all  the  instruments  used  among  the  ancient 
JewsP    Yea,  dancing  as  well  as  playing  I  " 

In  this  matter  of  condemning  church  organs, 
if  in  no  other,  Cotton  Mather  and  that  stanch 
Baptist,  Nicholas  Brown,  would  have  found 
themselves  in  heartiest  agreement.  There  is 
preserved  in  the  John  Carter  Brown  Library 
a  copy  of  an  invitation  sent  out  by  King's 
Church,  Providence,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
installation  of  its  new  organ,  and  on  this  broad- 
side,   below    the    printed    quotation,   "  Praise 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  151 

him  with  organs  ",  may  be  found,  written  in 
Mr.  Brown's  hand:  "  Praise  him  with  dancing 
and  the  Stringed  Instruments."  This  Episco- 
pal organ  was  the  second  in  Providence  —  the 
Providence  Congregational  Church  had  ac- 
quired one  the  previous  year  —  and  Mr.  Brown 
evidently  felt  that  the  time  had  come  to  "  take 
a  stand."  Doctor  Stiles  records  with  obvious 
pride  that  the  Congregational  instrument  pos- 
sessed two  hundred  pipes  and  was  the  "  first 
organ  in  a  dissenting  Chh.  in  America  except 
Jersey  [Princeton]  College.  .  .  .  Mr.  West  has 
exercised  himself  upon  it  a  month  in  learning 
to  play."  To  the  service  in  which  the  Episco- 
pal organ  was  "  play'd  on  by  Mr.  Flagg ", 
Stiles  alludes  as  the  "  Consecration  of  the 
Organ  ",  adding:  "  This  organ  was  taken  from 
the  Concert-Hall  in  Boston  —  from  being  em- 
ployed in  promoting  Festivity,  Merriment,  Ef- 
feminacy, Luxury,  and  Midnight  Revellings  — 
to  be  used  in  the  Worship  of  God." 

When  the  violoncello,  which  the  organ  seemed 
bound  to  displace,  had  been  introduced  into 
New  England,  precisely  the  same  objections 
had  been  raised  as  were  now  used  against  the 
introduction  of  the  organ.  They  were  the  first 
musical  instruments  allowed  in  our  churches, 
and  there  is  a  story  that  when  one  of  them  was 
twanged  for  the  first  time  in  the  first  Baptist 
Church    at    Providence,    a    mother    in    Israel 


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152  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

swung  open  her  pew  door,  caught  up  her  petti- 
coat between  thumb  and  finger,  and  capered 
down  the  aisle,  chanting  rhythmically: 

"  If  they  are  a-goin'  to  fiddle 
I  am  a-goin*  to  dance!  " 

The  organ,  whose  music  is  really  churchly 
and  reverent,  soon  made  its  way  in  spite  of 
opposition.  And  whereas,  in  1730,  the  Harvard 
Commencement  thesis:  "  Do  organs  excite  a 
devotional  spirit  in  divine  worship  ? "  was 
answered  in  the  negative,  by  1762  the  question: 
"  Does  music  promote  salvation?  "  won  an  en- 
thusiastic affirmative  in  this  same  high  quarter. 
And  by  music  was  meant  organ  music.  It  had 
by  this  time  been  discovered  that  the  organ 
helped  enormously  in  the  singing  of  the  Psalms, 
long  a  highly  important  feature  of  New  England 
worship. 

The  very  first  book  printed  in  New  England 
had  been  the  "  Bay  Psalm  Book  ",  now  the 
rarest  of  all  Americana,  and,  in  some  ways,  the 
most  interesting.  Richard  Mather,  Thomas 
Welde,  and  John  Eliot  had  collaborated  in  the 
text  of  this  volume,  and  President  Dunster  of 
Harvard  College  had  promptly  put  their  verses 
into  type  upon  a  "  printery  "  which  cost  fifty 
pounds  and  had  been  the  gift  of  friends  in  Hol- 
land to  the  new  community  in  1638. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  153 

Cotton  Mather,  in  his  "  Magnalia,"  relates 
with  evident  appreciation  the  history  of  this 
epoch-making  book: 

"  About  the  year  1639,  the  New-English  re- 
formers, considering  that  their  churches  enjoyed 
the  other  ordinances  of  Heaven  in  their  scrip- 
tural purity,  were  willing  that  '  The  singing  of 
Psalms '  should  be  restored  among  them  unto 
a  share  of  that  purity.  Though  they  blessed 
God  for  the  religious  endeavors  of  them  who 
translated  the  Psalms  into  the  meetre  usually 
annexed  at  the  end  of  the  Bible,  yet  they  be- 
held in  the  translation  so  many  detractions  from, 
additions  to,  and  variations  of,  not  only  the  text, 
but  the  sense  of  the  psalmist  that  it  was  an 
offense  unto  them. 

"  Resolving  then  upon  a  new  translation, 
the  chief  divines  in  the  country  took  each  of 
them  a  portion  to  be  translated;  among  whom 
were  Mr.  Welde  and  Mr.  Eliot  of  Roxbury, 
and  Mr.  Mather  of  Dorchester.  These,  like 
the  rest,  were  so  very  different  a  genius  for 
their  poetry  that  Mr.  Shephard,  of  Cambridge, 
in  the  occasion  addressed  them  to  this  pur- 
pose: 

"  You  Roxb*ry  poets  keep  clear  of  the  crime 
Of  missing  to  give  us  a  very  good  rhime. 
And  you  of  Dorchester,  your  verses  lengthen 
And  with  the  text's  pwn  words,  you  will  them 
strengthen. 


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164  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  The  Psalms  thus  turned  into  meetre  were 
printed  at  Cambridge  in  the  year  1640.  But 
afterwards  it  was  thought  that  a  little  more  of 
art  was  to  be  employed  upon  thein;  and  for  that 
cause  they  were  committed  unto  Mr.  Dunster, 
who  revised  and  refined  this  translation;  and 
(with  some  assistance  from  Mr.  Richard  Lyon 
who,  being  sent  over  by  Sir  Henry  Mildmay 
as  an  attendant  unto  his  son,  then  a  student 
at  Harvard  College,  now  resided  in  Mr.  Dun- 
ster's  house:)  he  brought  it  into  the  condition 
wherein  our  churches  have  since  used  it.  Now 
though  I  heartily  join  with  these  gentlemen 
who  wish  that  the  poetry  thereof  were  mended, 
yet  I  must  confess,  that  the  Psalms  have  never 
yet  seen  a  translation  that  I  know  of  nearer  to 
the  Hebrew  original;  and  I  am  willing  to  re- 
ceive the  excuse  which  our  translators  them- 
selves do  offer  us  when  they  say:  '  If  the  verses 
are  not  always  so  elegant  as  some  desire  or  ex- 
pect, let  them  consider  that  God's  altar  needs  not 
our  pollishings;  we  have  respected  rather  a  plain 
translation,  than  to  smooth  our  verses  with  the 
sweetness  of  any  paraphrase.  We  have  at- 
tended conscience  rather  than  elegance,  fidel- 
ity rather  than  ingenuity,  that  so  we  may  sing 
in  Zion  the  Lord's  songs  of  praise,  according 
unto  his  own  will,  until  he  bid  us  enter  into  our 
Master's  joy  to  sing  eternal  hallelujahs.'  " 

If   Cotton   Mather  had  exercised  the  same 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  155 

judicial  mind  and  Christian  charity  when  deal- 
ing with  the  witches  as  when  dealing  with  the 
labors  of  his  brother-ministers,  his  name  would 
not  to-day  be  anathema.  The  "  Bay  Psalm- 
Book  ",  no  less  than  the  witches,  needed  to 
be  gently  dealt  with,  however,  for  in  place  of 
the  dignified  rendering  which  the  English  Bible 
had  given  the  Psalms  of  David,  there  appeared 
from  the  hands  of  the  New  England  translators 
such  verses  as  these: 

"  Likewise  the  heavens  he  down-bow'd 
and  he  descended,  &  there  was 
under  his  feet  a  gloomy  cloud 

And  he  on  cherub  rode  and  flew; 
yea,  he  flew  on  the  wings  of  winde. 

His  secret  place  hee  darkness  made 
his  covert  that  him  round  confinde." 

Reverend  Elias  Nason  wittily  says  of  this 
triumph  in  collaboration,  "  Welde,  Eliot  and 
Mather  mounted  the  restive  steed  Pegasus, 
Hebrew  psalter  in  hand,  and  trotted  in  warm 
haste  over  the  rough  roads  of  Shemitic  roots 
and  metrical  psalmody.  Other  divines  rode 
behind,  and  after  cutting  and  slashing,  mending 
and  patching,  twisting  and  turning,  finally 
produced  what  must  ever  remain  the  most 
unique  specimen  of  poetical  tinkering  in  our 
literature." 

Judge   Sewall,   however,   valued   the   "  Bay 


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156  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

Fsalm-Book "  highly  and  was  always  making  . 
a  present  of  it  to  ladies  whom  he  admired.  He 
bought  one,  "  bound  neatly  in  Kids  Leather  ", 
for  "  3  shillings  &  sixpence  '*,  deeming  it  a 
cheap  and  appropriate  gift  for  one  of  the  widows 
he  was  wooing.  A  copy  of  the  first  edition 
would  now  be  worth  several  hundred  dollars. 
The  one  owned  by  the  American  Antiquarian 
Society  of  Worcester  bears  on  the  inside  of 
its  front  cover  this  statement,  in  the  clear 
and  -beautiful  handwriting  of  Isaiah  Thomas: 
"  After  advertising  for  another  copy  of  this 
book  and  making  enquiry  in  many  places  in 
New  England  &c.  I  was  not  able  to  obtain  or 
even  hear  of  another.  This  copy  is  therefore 
invaluable  and  must  be  preserved  with  the 
greatest  care.  Isaiah  Thomas,  Sep.  20,  1820." 
To  the  atrocities  of  the  "  Bay  Psalm-Book  " 
was  doubtless  due,  in  large  measure,  the  execra- 
ble singing  which  the  organ  came  to  mitigate. 
The  1698  edition  of  the  "  Psalm-Book  "  had 
in  its  last  pages  "  Some  few  directions  "  re- 
garding the  musical  rendering  of  its  Psalms, 
but  Judge  Sewall,  to  whose  lot  it  often  fell  to 
"  set  the  tune "  in  the  Old  South  Meeting- 
house, had  often  to  record  in  his  diary  his  utter 
failure  in  the  performance  of  this  important 
rite.  Here  is  the  pathetic  entry  concerning 
one  of  his  mistakes:  "He  spake  to  me  to  set 
the  tune.     I  intended  Windsor  and  fell  into 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  157 

High  Dutch,  and  then  essaying  to  set  another 
tune  went  into  a  Key  much  too  high.  So  I  pray 'd 
to  Mr.  White  to  set  it  which  he  did  well.  Litch- 
field Tune.  The  Lord  Humble  me  and  In- 
struct me  that  I  should  be  the  occasion  of  any 
interruption  in  the  worship  of  God." 

Of  course,  the  appalling  length  of  many  of 
the  Psalms  was  one  insuperable  barrier  to  their 
successful  performance.  Some  of  them  were 
one  hundred  and  thirty  lines  long,  and,  when 
lined  and  sung,  consumed  a  full  half-hour  — 
during  which  the  congregation  stood.  A  parson 
who  had  forgotten  to  bring  his  sermon  to  meet- 
ing with  him.  could  give  out  a  long  Psalm  and 
go  comfortably  home  and  back  before  the 
congregation  had  finished  singing.  Gradually, 
the  "  lining  "  of  the  Psalms  —  reading  them 
off,  that  is,  line  by  line,  for  the  benefit  of  those 
who  "  wanted  books  and  skill  to  read "  — 
was  realized  to  be  one  reason  why  the  singing 
was  so  bad  and,  after  long  and  bitter  con- 
troversy, this  practice  was  abandoned.  Then 
there  came  another  fierce  battle  over  the  de- 
mand that  the  singing  should  be  by  note.  In 
the  Xevr  England  Chronicle  of  1733,  we  find 
the  conservatives*  objection  to  this  innova- 
tion voiced  as  follows:  "  Truly  I  have  a  great 
jealousy  that  if  we  begin  to  sing  by  rule,  the 
next  thing  will  be  to  pray. hy  rule  and  preach 
by  rule  and  then  comes  popery" 


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158  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Yet  the  way  of  progress  won  ultimately,  as 
it  was  bound  to  do.  And  thus  the  *'  singing- 
school  "  came  to  be  born.  This  important 
New  England  institution  ranks  properly  as  an 
amusement,  and  so  will  be  discussed  in  our 
chapter  dealing  with  recreations  of  the  olden 
times.  But  it  is  important  to  note  that  in  its 
beginnings,  it  was  intimately  related  —  just 
as  we  shall  show  the  tavern  to  have  been  — 
to  the  all-important  meeting-house  of  old 
New  England. 

By  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  many 
new  Psalm-Books  of  varying  wretchedness  had 
appeared;  but  music,  as  we  know  it  to-day, 
scarcely  had  a  voice  in  New  England  worship 
until  1778,  when  William  Billings,  a  tanner 
by  trade  but  a  musician  by  avocation,  pub- 
lished an  abridgment  of  his  "  New  England 
Psalm  Singer  ",  which  came  to  be  known  as 
"  Billings'  Best "  and  attained  considerable 
popularity.  Doctor  Louis  Elson  has  said  of 
Billings  that  he  "  broke  the  ice  which  was 
congealing  New  England  music." 

The  feature  of  Billings'  tunes  was  "  fuguing  ", 
of  whose  power  to  raise  the  soul  to  Heaven 
Billings  was  very  proud.  Doctor  Mather 
Byles  also  approved  of  this  style  of  music  and 
wrote  a  little  verse  to  express  his  appreciation. 
But  many  other  little  verses  there  were  in 
quite  a  different  tone.    Here  are  two,  reprinted 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  159 

in  the  "American  Apollo"  in  1792,  which  pur- 
port to  have  been  "  written  out  of  temper  on 
a  Fannel  in  one  of  the  Fues  in  Salem  Church  " : 

"  Could  poor  King  David  but  for  once 
To  Salem  Church  repair; 
And  hear  his  Psalms  thus  warbled  out, 
Good  Lord,  how  he  would  swear. 

"  But  could  St.  Paul  but  just  pop  in, 
From  higher  scenes  abstracted, 
And  hear  his  Gospel  now  explained, 
By  Heavens,  he'd  run  distracted.'* 

It  remained  for  Oliver  Holden,  who  had 
Celtic  blood  in  his  veins,1  —  as  well  as  blood  of 
purest  Puritan  strain,  —  to  write  hymns  which 
were  really  beautiful  and  so  put  into  enduring 
musical  form  the  pent-up  religious  fervor  of 
New  England.  Holden,  like  Billings,  pub- 
lished a  number  of  hymn  books,  the  most 
notable  being  "  The  Worcester  Collection  of 
Sacred  Harmony  ",  given  to  the  world  in  1797 
and  printed  by  Isaiah  Thomas  of  Worcester 
from  movable  types  bought  in  Europe,  the  last 
to  be  so  bought  for  use  in  this  country.  Coro- 
nation, probably  the  best  known  American 
hymn  ever  written,  was  composed  for  the  dedi- 
cation, in  May,  1801,  of  a  church  which  stood 


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160  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

almost  in  front  of  Holden's  home  in  Charles- 
town.  The  church  has  long  since  disappeared, 
but  the  house  in  which  Holden  wrote  Corona- 
tion still  survives,  as  does  the  organ  upon  which 
he  harmonized  it.  That  this  hymn  is  a  splen- 
didly stirring  one,  even  we  of  to-day  well  know. 
A  century  ago  it  roused  the  Yankees  to  a  pitch 
of  religious  enthusiasm  not  unlike  the  patriotic 
frenzy  of  the  sans-culottes  when  the  Marseillaise 
was  being  sung. 

But  it  was  the  sermon  and  not  the  hymns, 
however  good,  which  engaged  the  chief  interest 
of  pious  New  Englanders.  These  sermons 
were  wont  to  be  written  in  a  fine  hand  on  small 
pages  four  by  six  inches  in  size,  and  the  one 
which  I  hold  before  me  in  manuscript  must 
have  been  as  severe  a  tax  upon  the  eyes  of  the 
parson  as  upon  the  patience  of  his  congregation. 
We  of  the  twentieth  century  are  congenitally 
disqualified,  however,  to  pronounce  upon  the 
sermons  of  our  ancestors.  The  temper  of  that 
day  was  argumentative,  there  was  much  leisure, 
during  the  performance  of  manual  labors,  to  re- 
flect on  the  things  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  — 
and  there  was  very  little  else  to  distract  the 
mind  from  what  the  parson  had  to  say. 

In  the  churches,  or  to  speak  more  by  the 
book,  the  "  meeting-houses "  of  early  New 
England,  the  whole  social  and  intellectual,  as 
well  as  religious,  life  of  the  day  was  concen- 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  161 

trated.  The  church  was  practically  a  club  as 
well  as  a  religious  organization,  and  "  going  to 
meetin'  "  was  the  most  exciting  event  of  the 
week.  To  live  near  the  meeting-house,  close 
enough  to  be  able  to  walk  there,  was  the  height 
of  social  privilege;  but  the  necessity  of  jour- 
neying five  or  six  miles  to  hear  the  word  of  God 
was  not  by  any  means  regarded  as  an  excuse 
for  absence.  Quite  the  contrary.  For  were 
there  not  endless  possibilities  of  pleasure  to 
be  derived  from  cross-roads  encounters,  from 
church-porch  gossipings  before  and  after  the 
sermon,  and  from  the  nooning  period  spent  in 
the  refreshment  of  the  inner  man  ? 

It  is  a  curious  and  interesting  fact  that  there 
was  often  a  tavern  near  the  meeting-house, 
which  had  been  placed  there  for  the  express 
purpose  of  Sunday  refreshment  during  this 
noon  period.  Many  cases  may  be  found  in 
which  such  proximity  was  the  condition  with- 
out which  no  permit  to  sell  "  beare  "  could  be 
obtained.  Thus  we  find  the  records  of  1651 
granting  to  John  Vyall  of  Boston  "  Libertie  to 
keep  a  house  of  Common  entertainment  if  the 
Countie  Court  Consent,  -provided  he  keepe  it 
near  the  new  Tneeting-kouse." 

Occasionally  there  were  long  and  bitter 
fights  in  town-meeting  about  the  location  of 
the  meeting-house.  Fitchburg,  Massachusetts, 
wrangled  for  ten  years,  1786-1796,  as  to  whether 


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162  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

its  proposed  new  structure  should  or  should  not 
be  situated  in  the  westerly  part  of  the  town. 
An  amusing  incident  of  the  contest  was  that 
two  tavern-keepers  in  that  section,  Jedidiah 
Cooper  and  Jacob  Upton,  in  order  to  draw  busi- 
ness their  way,  finally  built  a  meeting-house 
of  their  own,  which  was  used  to  some  extent  for 
preaching,  but  which,  failing  to  be  much  fre- 
quented or  well  kept  up,  won  for  itself  the  name, 
the  "  Lord's  Barn  ",  and  was  ultimately  sold  for 
thirty-six  dollars.  The  one  amicable  and  unani- 
mous vote  connected  with  this  whole  contro- 
versy was  concerning  the  amount  of  rum  which 
might  be  consumed  at  the  town's  expense  when, 
at  the  end  of  the  ten  years,  the  location  of  the 
new  meeting-house  was  with  difficulty  agreed 
upon  and  a  day  appointed  for  the  "  raising." 
Thirty-eight  dollars  and  one  cent  was  appro- 
priated for  "  Rum  and  Shugar  "  to  be  assimi- 
lated on  this  occasion,  and  the  resulting  edifice 
was  dedicated  January  19,  1797,  Reverend  Zab- 
diel  Adams  of  Lunenburg  preaching  the  sermon. 
A  curious  story  is  told  of  the  way  in  which 
Wickford,  Rhode  Island,  got  its  parish  church 
where  it  wanted  to  have  it.  This  "  oldest 
Episcopal  church  still  standing  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  United  States  "  was  erected  in  1707 
at  the  top  of  what  was  then  called  McSparran 
Hill,  and  was  long  known  as  the  Narragansett 
Church.     In  the  course  of  seventy-five  years, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  163 

the  population  changed  so  much,  however, 
that  most  of  the  worshippers  who  came  to  the 
church  had  to  travel  from  Wickford,  seven 
miles  away.  Yet  the  McSparran  faction  was 
not  willing  that  the  church  should  be  removed 
to  the  more  convenient  site.  Then  the  Wick- 
fordians  resolved  on  a  coup  d'etat.  The  road, 
from  the  place  where  the  church  stood  to  Wick- 
ford, was  all  down  hill.  Mustering  their  forces, 
one  evening  (in  1800) ,  and  pressing  into  the  serv- 
ice all  the  oxen  in  the  neighborhood,  the  Wick- 
ford contingent  placed  the  edifice  on  wheels  and, 
while  their  opponents  soundly  slept,  hauled  it 
to  the  spot  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  which  seemed 
to  them  the  most  convenient  place  for  it.  As 
there  was  no  getting  the  building  up  the  hill 
again,  the  McSparran  folk  had  no  vent  for  the 
wrath  that  possessed  them.  For,  of  course, 
they  could  not  use  unchurchly  language. 

Settlements  which  had  built  their  meeting- 
houses on  such  high  hills  or  in  such  out-of-the- 
way  places  that  no  innkeeper  could  be  per- 
suaded to  go  into  business  in  that  location 
were  wont  to  erect  "  fire  rooms  "  near  by,  in 
which  the  frozen  congregation  might  thaw  out 
between  services.  Here,  in  the  genial  noon- 
ing hour,  many  a  good  time  was  enjoyed  as 
lunches  were  warmed  up  before  the  blazing 
logs,  and  the  satisfying  flip  made  to  sizzle 
cheerily  on  the  hearth.    The  social  side  of  the 


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164  SOCIAL   LIFE  IN 

"  meetin'  "  was  here  seen  at  its  best,  and  while 
the  mothers  compared  their  domestic  difficulties 
and  the  fathers  discussed  the  various  "  points  " 
of  the  sermon  and  talked  over  the  notices*which 
the  parson  had  read  from  the  pulpit  or  which 
they  had  seen  posted  on  the  meeting-house  door, 
the  young  people  cast  sheep's  eyes  at  each  other 
as  young  people  have  ever  done. 

Many  a  happy  marriage  dated  its  prefatory 
chapter  from  words  of  love  whispered  during 
this  nooning  period.  In  the  diary  of  a  little 
Puritan  maiden  '  who  had  a  home  down  Cape 
Cod  way,  we  find  some  entries  which  show  this 
clearly:  "  March  20,  1676.  This  day  had  a 
private  fast.  Mr.  WHlard  spoke  to  the  second 
commandment.  Mr.  Eliot  prayed.  While  we 
were  ceasing  for  half  an  hour,  I  saw  Samuel 
Checkly  and  smiled;  this  was  not  the  time  to 
trifle  and  I  repented,  especially  as  he  looked  at 
me  so  many  times  after  that  I  found  my  mind 
wandering  from  the  psalm.  And  afterwards, 
when  the  Biskets,  Beer,  Cider  and  Wine  were 
distributed  he  whispered  to  me  that  he  would 
rather  serve  me  than  the  elders,  which  wa3  a 
wicked  thing  to  say,  and  I  felt  myself  to  blame." 

"  June  19.  Samuel  Checkly  hath  given  in  his 
testimony,  hath  witnessed  a  good  confession, 
and  become  a  Freeman." 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  166 

"  October  2.  Today  I  plucked  some  yellow 
and  purple  flowers  and  have  opened  the  windows 
in  the  fore-room;  I  can  but  rejoice  and  be  glad. 
Samuel  Checkly,  coming  through  the  swamp 
at  the  same  time  .  .  .  would  fain  have  brought 
my  flowers  for  me,  but  that  seemed  to  me  not 
maidenly  or  proper  to  allow,  so  he  returned  by 
the  way  he  came." 

"  October  30.  Mother  hath  gone  to  the  fast 
at  Jabez  Rowland's.  I  would  fain  cook  the 
pumpkin  for  the  morrow,  but,  though  I  do  not 
go  to  the  service  I  must  keep  the  fast  at  home. 
It  is  weary  doing  nothing;  Samuel  Checkly's 
mother  is  too  sick  to  go,  and  surely  Samuel  will 
stay  at  home  with  her." 

"  Boston,  April  2,  1677.  Mother  has  writ 
that  Samuel  Checkly's  mother  was  buried  in 
March.  There  was  a  fine  funeral  but  she  says 
she  had  tasted  better  funeral  meats.  The  nap- 
kins were  good  but  sadly  stained  by  the  saffron 
in  the  meat.    Poor  Samuel!  " 

"  November  16,  1677.  A  letter  hath  come 
from  Samuel  Checkly  by  the  hand  of  Eliphalet 
Tishmond,  which  hath  set  my  heart  in  a  flutter. 
Since  good  Mistress  Checkly  hath  entered  in  to 
her  Rest,  poor  Samuel  hath  been  very  lonely." 

This  is  the  end  of  the  diary,  for  its  shy  little 
writer,  Hetty  Shepard,  was  soon  afterwards 
married  to  Samuel  Checkly,  the  good  youth 
who  first  made  love  to  her  during  a  Sunday 


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166  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

nooning  period  —  and  who  had  been  "  lonely  " 
ever  since. 

One  other  entry,  not  about  Samuel  Checkly's 
"  loneliness,"  which  Hetty  Shepard  made  in 
this  diary  during  her  visit  to  Boston,  is  as  fol- 
lows: "  Went  to  the  meeting  house,  but  could 
not  sit  with  Uncle  John  because  he  had  been 
voted  to  the  first  seat,  while  Aunt  Mehitable 
was  voted  into  the  third.  This  seems  to  ine  not 
according  to  justice,  but  Aunt  Mehitable  bade 
me  consider  the  judgment  of  the  Elders  and  the 
ti thing-man  as  above  mine  own.  The  pews  are 
larger  than  I  ever  saw  being  square  with  balus- 
trades around  them.  A  chair  in  the  centre  for  the 
aged.  One  corner  pew  was  lifted  high  above 
the  stairs  almost  to  the  ceiling,  and  was  sat  in 
by  the  blacks." 

Which  brings  us  to  one  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic of  all  the  interesting  customs  connected 
with  worship  in  old  New  England,  —  "  seating 
the  meeting."  Arranging  the  congregation  with 
due  deference  to  rank  was  quite  as  difficult  a 
process  for  our  forefathers  as  the  ceremonies 
of  a  Pumpernickel  court.  Usually,  certain  com- 
mittees had  this  very  important  matter  in 
charge,  but  occasionally  the  town  meeting 
directly  prescribed  who  should  sit  where.  Com- 
monly, there  were  seven  ranks  or  divisions  in 
the  seating,  and  sometimes  these  extended  to 
fifteen.    For  trustees,  justices,  and  subscribers 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  167 

of  forty  shillings  per  annum  toward  the  church 
rates,  especially  good  seats  were  provided. 
Those  giving  thirty  shillings  had  the  next  best 
places,  thus  grading  downward  to  pew  Num- 
ber 6,  which  contained  nine-shilling  contrib- 
utors. Pew  Number  7  was  usually  for  young 
men  who  were  not  yet  heads  of  families. 

Then  came  the  feminine  contingent,  led  off 
by  the  inevitable  widows,  —  ministers'  widows 
naturally  coming  first,  as  deserving  of  most 
honor.  Following  whom  the  wives  of  the  sub- 
scribers of  forty  shillings  found  place.  But  the 
classification  was  not  wholly  by  money;  po- 
sition and  family  immensely  influenced  —  and 
so  complicated  —  the  work  of  the  seating  com- 
mittees. 

The  highest  and  most  privileged  seats  were, 
of  course,  "  at  the  table."  Next  in  rank  came 
the  fore-seats,  which  faced  the  congregation 
on  either  side  of  the  pulpit.  When  Judge  Sewall 
married  his  second  wife,  Mrs.  Tilly,  he  was 
invited,  by  virtue  of  her  rank,  to  occupy  a 
fore-seat.  With  much  pride  he  writes:  "  Mr. 
Oliver  in  the  names  of  the  Overseers  invites  my 
wife  to  sit  in  the  foreseat.  I  thought  to  have 
brought  her  into  my  pue.  I  thank  him  and 
the  Overseers."  But  this  new  wife  died  at  the 
end  of  a  few  months,  and  then  Sewall  reproached 
himself  for  the  pride  he  had  taken  in  this  honor, 
and  left  his  place  in  the  men's  fore-seat.   "  God 


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168  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

in  his  holy  Sovereignty  put  my  wife  out  of  the 
Fore  Seat.  I  apprehended  I  had  cause  to  be 
ashamed  of  my  Sin  and  loath  myself  for  it, 
and  retired  into  my  Pue."  When  Sewall  was 
himself  asked  to  take  a  part  in  "  seating  of  the 
meeting ",  he  diplomatically  evaded  the  re- 
sponsibility; full  well  he  knew  that  it  was 
practically  impossible  to  please  everybody  while 

"  In  the  goodly  house  of  worship,  where  in  order 

due  and  fit, 
As  by  public  vote  directed,  classed  and  ranked 

the  people  sit; 
Mistress  first  and  goodwife  after,  clerkly  squire 

before  the  clown 
From  the  brave  coat,  lace  embroidered,  to  the 

gray  frock  shading  down." 

In  nearly  all  towns  negroes  had  seats  apart, 
black  women  being  seated  in  an  enclosed  pew 
labeled  "  B.  W.  ",  and  negro  men  in  one  la- 
beled "  B.  M."  Boys  sat  on  the  pulpit  and 
gallery  stairs,  and  unmarried  men  and  un- 
married women  by  themselves  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  church.  Occasionally  a  group  of 
unmarried  women  would  build  and  own  a 
"  maids  pue "  in  common.  In  the  church 
records  of  a  town  named  Scotland,  in  Connecti- 
cut, may  be  found  an  entry  to  the  effect  that 
"  An  Hurlburt,  Pashants  and  Mary  Lazelle, 
Younes  Bingham,  prudenc   Hurlburt  and  Je- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  169 

rusha  meachem"  are  empowered  to  build  a 
pew  "  provided  they  build  within  a  year  and 
raise  ye  pue  no  higher  than  the  seat  is  on  the 
Mens  side."  Restrictions  as  to  the  height  of  the 
pew  almost  invariably  accompanied  permits  to 
build. 

For,  whereas  the  first  seats  of  the  early  New 
.  England  meeting-houses  had  been  rough  benches 
placed  on  legs,  like  milking-stools,  by  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  the  worshippers  sat 
in  pews  whose  partition  walls  extended  so  high 
that  only  the  tops  of  the  tallest  heads  could  be 
seen  when  the  occupants  were  in  their  places. 
The  seats  here  were  still  narrow  and  uncom- 
fortable, however,  being  mere  shelves  on  hinges, 
which  ranged  around  three  and  sometimes  four 
sides  of  the  pew.  During  the  psalms  and  the 
prayers,  which  were  frequently  half  an  hour  in 
length,  the  people  stood,  leaning  on  the  sides 
of  the  pew,  their  seats  shut  up  to  give  them 
more  room. 

"  And  when  at  last  the  loud  Amen 
Fell  from  aloft,  how  quickly  then 
The  seats  came  down  with  heavy  rattle, 
Like  musketry  in  fiercest  battle." 

Wriggling  boys  looked  forward  eagerly,  of 
course,  to  this  opportunity  to  signify  their  ap- 
proval of  the  Amen.  Thus  there  came  to  be 
such  entries  in  the  church-books  as  this:  "  The 


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170  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

people  are  to  Let  down  their  Seats  without 
Such  Nois."  "  The  boyes  are  not  to  wickedly 
noise  down  their  pew-seaU."  The  slamming 
of  pew-seats  could  often  be  heard  more  than 
half  a  mile  away  from  the  meeting-house,  in 
the  summer-time;  there  seems  quite  sufficient 
ground,  therefore,  for  the  story  about  a  South- 
erner, who,  entering  an  old  New  England  church 
rather  late  one  Sunday  morning,  exclaimed  in 
amazement,  as  the  rattle  of  descending  seats 
fell  upon  his  ears:  "  What,  do  you  Northern 
people  applaud  in  church?  " 

Strutting  up  and  down  the  aisle  in  any  one 
of  these  old  meeting-houses  was  to  be  seen  the 
tithing-man,  whom  Mrs.  Earle  has  well  called 
"  the  most  grotesque,  the  most  extraordinary, 
the  most  highly  colored  figure  in  all  the  dull 
New  England  church-life."  Laborious  and 
delicate  as  was  the  work  of  the  seating  com- 
mittee, it  was  as  nothing  compared  to  the  task 
of  the  tithing-man,  that  functionary  who  cate- 
chized the  heads  of  the  ten  families  under  his 
care,  saw  that  the  living  expenses  of  his  charges 
were  never  disproportionate  to  the  sum  they 
appropriated  for  church-worship,  and,  on  the 
Sabbath,  walked  grandly  about,  bearing  his 
wand  of  office  and  using  it  with  all  zeal.  This 
wand  was  a  long  staff,  sharply  knobbed  at  one 
end,  —  the  boys*  end.  From  the  other  end 
hung  a  long  fox-tail  or  a  hare's  foot,  with  which 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  171 

to  tickle  the  men  and  women  who  had  dropped 
into  a  gentle  doze  during  the  sermon.  Caraway 
seed  was  supposed  to  be  a  fortifier  against  over- 
whelming sleepiness.  For  which  reason  the 
little  bouquet  which  formed  a  part  of  the 
women's  going  to  meetin'  toilet,  in  summer, 
nearly  always  included,  with  its  pinks  or  white 
rose,  a  sprig  of  this  fragrant  plant.  But  the  men, 
of  course,  disdained  such  helps,  and  fell  asleep 
very  often.  Sometimes,  when  the  tithing- 
man  pricked  them  with  his  staff,  they  sprang 
up,  as  did  Mr.  Tomlins  of  Lynn  on  a  certain 
occasion,  to  "  prophanlie  exclaim  in  a  loud  voice 
curse  ye  wood-chuck,  he  dreaming  so  it  seemed 
yt  a  wood-chuck  had  seized  and  bit  his  hand." 
One  Puritan  preacher  ironically  suggested  to 
a  congregation,  which  he  observed  to  be  in  a 
somnolent  state,  that  they  might  like  better 
the  Church  of  England  service  of  sitting  down 
and  standing  up,  a  very  dreadful  threat  which 
must  have  roused  them  quite  effectively.  For 
the  Church  of  England  was  to  the  Puritan  like 
a  red  rag  to  a  bull.  When  Episcopalians  were 
granted  the  right  to  hold  services  in  the  east 
end  of  Boston's  Town  House,  in  the  spring  of 
1686  (in  anticipation  of  the  arrival  in  Massa- 
chusetts of  the  Colonial  Governor,  Sir  Edmund 
Andros),  Samuel  Sewall  piously  chanted  "as 
exceedingly  suited  to  the  day  "  the  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-first  Psalm,  beginning:  "Lord, 


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172  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

I  cry  unto  thee;  make  haste  unto  me;  give  ear 
unto  my  voice,  when  I  cry  unto  thee  ",  and 
ending  after  much  similar  lamentation  with  the 
petition,  "  Let  the  wicked  fall  into  their  own 
nets  whilst  that  I  withal  escape." 

A  great  many  things  that  seem  to  us  very 
puzzling,  very  narrow,  and  very  repellent  in  the 
early  history  of  New  England,  become  quite 
clear  when  we  realize  that  at  the  beginning 
the  identity  of  Church  and  State  was  absolute. 
There  were  no  freemen  except  Church  members, 
no  tests  of  citizenship  except  adherence  to  the 
creed  of  the  fathers.  It  was  not  then  a  ques- 
tion of  Church  and  State;  the  Church  was  the 
State.1  Heresy  and  sedition  were  thus  synony- 
mous terms.  Thus  when  Anne  Hutchinson, 
tried  at  the  ecclesiastical  bar  for  an  offense 
against  religion  (as  those  in  power  then  under- 
stood the  term),  was  found  guilty,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  her  punishment  should  be  banish- 
ment from  the  colony.  The  year  of  her  perse- 
cution, 1637,  was  just  seventeen  years  after  the 
Pilgrims  had  landed  in  America,  and  their  spirit 
of  desperate  sincerity  and  seriousness  was  still 
strong.  Work  and  prayer  still  occupied  all 
their  thought.  Religion  was  the  sole  comfort 
of  their  souls,  "  the  food  ",  as  has  been  said, 
"  which  ate  up  all  the  attachments  and   re- 

■  Ministers  were  generally  chosen  in  open  town  meeting;  and 
their  support,  which  was  at  flint  voluntary,  early  became  a  regular 
item  of  civic  expense. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  173 

membrances  of  home,  all  their  regrets  at  leaving 
it,  very  many  if  not  all  their  baser  passions." 
And  as  it  was  scarcely  to  be  expected  then  that 
they  would  supinely  suffer  the  presence  among 
them  of  one  actively  at  work  to  pull  down  the 
institutions  and  beliefs  they  held  so  dear,  so 
we  should  not  wonder  that,  fifty  years  later, 
they  resented  with  corroding  hatred  the  high- 
handedness of  Sir  Edmund  Andros. 

Men  who  had  withstood  the  temptations  of 
the  Devil  and  fallen  into  no  heresy  were  so 
proud  of  the  fact  that  they  sometimes  had  it 
incorporated  into  their  epitaphs!  Thus  Thomas 
Dudley  of  Roxbury  left  as  his  dying  message: 

"  Farewell  dear  wife,  children  and  friends, 

Hate  heresy,  make  blessed  ends, 

Bear  poverty,  live  with  good  men, 

So  shall  we  meet  with  joy  again. 

Let  men  of  God  in  courts  and  churches  watch 

O'er  such  as  do  a  toleration  hatch, 

Lest  that  ill  egg  bring  forth  a  cockatrice, 

To  poison  all  with  heresy  and  vice. 

If  men  be  left  and  otherwise  combine, 

My  epitaph's  I  dy'd  no  libertine." 

Sewall  was  the  last  man  to  "  hatch  a  tolera- 
tion." So,  though  it  is  amusing,  it  is  also 
touching  to  follow  his  mental  processes  at  this 
time.  He  has  grave  doubts  whether  he  can 
conscientiously  serve  in  the  militia  under  a 
flag  in  which  the  cross,  cut  out  by  Endicott, 


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174  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

has  been  replaced,  and  he  finally  answers  his 
own  question  by  resigning  as  captain  of  the 
South  Company.  All  forms  and  ceremonies, 
symbols  and  signs,  it  must  be  recollected,  were 
to  the  Puritans  marks  of  the  Beast,  and  it  was 
torture  to  them  to  see  them  coming  back  into 
use;  to  have  a  priest  in  a  surplice  conducting, 
in  their  Town  House,  a  service  they  had  crossed 
the  seas  to  escape;  to  see  men  buried  accord- 
ing to  the  prayer-book;  and  to  learn  that  mar- 
riages, which  they  had  made  a  purely  civil  con- 
tract, must  henceforth  be  solemnized  by  the 
rites  of  the  church.  Regardless  of  the  wishes 
of  Sewall  and  his  kind,  however,  Sir  Edmund 
Andros  determined  that  Church  of  England 
services  should  be  carried  on,  and,  pending  the 
erection  of  a  suitable  edifice,  declared  that  a 
prayer-book  service  must  be  held  in  one  of  the 
three  Boston  meeting-houses.  Vigorously  the 
Puritans  protested  that  they  could  not "  consent 
to  part  with  it  to  such  use  "  and  exhibited  a 
deed  showing  their  right  to  control  service  in 
the  South  Meeting-house.  But  it  was  all  of 
no  avail;  the  service  was  held  there  just  the 
same,  and  "  Goodm.  Needham,  tho'  had  re- 
solv'd  to  ye  Contrary,  was  prevail'd  upon  to 
Ring  ye  Bell."  The  ringing  of  that  bell  sounded 
the  knell  of  Puritan  autocracy  in  New  England. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  the  people  in 
the  towns,  as  well  as  in  the  villages,  still  clung 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  175 

to  the  long,  long  sermons  and  the  dreary,  ex- 
temporaneous prayers  for  whose  sake  they  had 
exiled  themselves.  And  the  fact  that  their 
meeting-houses  were  stifling  hot  in  summer  and 
freezing  cold  in  winter  scarcely  affected  them 
at  all.  Veritable  stoics  were  these  Puritans! 
The  women,  to  be  sure,  sometimes  had  little 
foot-stoves  filled  with  live  coals  to  keep  their 
feet  warm  during  the  service;  and  they  doubt- 
less needed  them.  For,  even  in  the  coldest 
weather,  the  Puritan  woman  wore  linen  under- 
clothing and  gowns  with  short  elbow  sleeves 
and  round  low  necks.  Only  their  hands  and 
their  heads  were  warmly  clothed,  the  former 
by  means  of  mittens  and  muffs,1  and  the  latter 
by  the  use  of  quilted  hoods.  Yet  even  foot-stoves 
were  not  always  allowed.  After  the  First 
Church  of  Roxbury  was  destroyed  by  fire,  in 
1747,  the  use  of  foot-stoves  in  meeting  was  there 
prohibited.  In  order  to  avoid  the  necessity  of 
similar  action  the  Old  South  Church  of  Boston 
made  this  rule,  January  16,  1771:  "Whereas 
danger  is  apprehended  from  the  stoves  that  are 
frequently  left  in  the  meeting-house  after  the 
publique  worship  is  over;  Voted,  that  the 
saxton  make  diligent  search  on  the  Lord's  Day 
evening  and  in  the  evening  after  a  lecture,  to 
see  if  any  stoves  are  left  in  the  house,  and  that 
if  he  find  any  there  he  take  them  to  his  own 

1  Often  they  carried  hot  potatoes  in  the  muSi, 


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176  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

house;  and  itt  is  expected  that  the  owners  of 
such  stoves  make  reasonable  satisfaction  to  the 
Saxton  for  his  trouble  before  they  take  them 
away." 

Since  men  had  no  stoves  on  which  to  warm 
their  feet,  they  sometimes  brought  their  dogs 
to  church  to  serve  as  a  foot-muff.  By  reason 
of  which  custom,  we  find  in  the  records  of  the 
early  churches  such  entries  as:  "Whatsoever 
doggs  come  into  the  meeting-house  in  time  of 
public  worship,  their  owners  shall  each  pay  sis- 
pence." 

The  First  Church  of  Boston,  which,  in  1778, 
began  to  heat  its  meeting-house  by  means  of  a 
stove,  has  generally  been  credited  with  head- 
ing the  procession  of  the  Puritan  Sybarites; 
but  it  is  now  conceded  that  this  distinction  be- 
longs to  Hadley,  Massachusetts,  which  had  an 
iron  stove  in  its  meeting-house  as  early  as 
1734.  In  1783  the  Old  South  Church,  Boston, 
adopted  this  luxurious  innovation,  thus  causing 
the  Evening  Post  of  January  25,  1783,  to  bewail 
modern  customs  as  follows : 

"  Extinct  the  sacred  fire  of  love, 
Our  zeal  grown  cold  and  dead, 
In  the  house  of  God  we  fix  a  stove 
To  warm  us  in  their  stead." 

Stove  and  anti-stove  factions  now  developed 
in  every  New  England  congregation.    One  very 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  177 

amusing  story  is  told  about  the  wife  of  an  anti- 
stove  deacon,  who  found  the  unaccustomed  heat 
so  exhausting  that  when  the  minister  referred 
in  his  sermon  to  "  heaping  coals  of  fire  "  she 
could  bear  the  stifling  atmosphere  no  longer 
and  fainted.  Upon  being  resuscitated,  she  mur- 
mured languidly  that  her  bad  turn  was  all  due 
to  the  "  heat  of  that  stove."  Her  discomfort 
had  a  keen  rival  in  her  chagrin,  when  she  was  told 
that  no  fire  had  as  yet  been  hghted  in  the 
church's  recent  purchase. 

The  minister  who  could  hold  the  balance 
even,  in  the  midst  of  these  petty  bickerings, 
and  keep  his  people  spiritual-minded  and  honest- 
hearted,  whatever  controversies  or  dissensions 
might  be  under  way,  had  to  be  a  very  remarka- 
ble person.  There  is  abundant  evidence  that 
the  clergy  of  early  New  England  were  remark- 
able. The  people  usually  appreciated  their 
saintly  qualities,  too,  and  gave  them  all  honor 
alive  as  well  as  dead.  To  be  sure,  the  salaries 
paid  these  good  men  seem  to  us  of  to-day  very 
small,  and  we  wonder  how  a  family  could  have 
been  brought  up  and  sent  to  college  on  so  few 
pounds  of  actual  money  per  year.  Yet  we  can- 
not escape  the  fact  that  every  householder 
contributed,  according  to  his  means,  to  the  sup- 
port of  the  church  and  its  activities  and  gave 
to  the  parson,  also,  a  share  of  all  good  things 
which  came  fortuitously  his  way.    At  Plymouth, 


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178  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

in  1662,  the  court  provided  that  to  "  the  able 
and  godly  minister  among  them  "  should  be 
given  some  part  of  every  whale  there  cast  up 
from  the  sea.  In  Newbury  the  first  salmon 
caught  each  year  went  to  the  parson;  and 
Judge  Sewall  records  that  he  visited  the  minis- 
ter and  "  carried  him  a  Bushel  of  Turnips,  cost 
me  five  shillings,  and  a  Cabbage  cost  half  a 
Crown."  (The  "  donation  party  "  for  the  minis- 
ter was  a  New  England  institution  of  much  later 
development  and  of  considerably  less  dignity.) 
Wood  for  the  parson  was  regarded  as  a  regular 
part  of  the  parish  responsibility,  and  when  it 
was  not  forthcoming  the  minister  felt  no  hesi- 
tation about  alluding  publicly  to  his  lack. 
Thus  on  a  certain  November  Sunday,  Reverend 
Mr.  French  of  Andover  said  significantly: 
"  I  will  write  two  discourses  and  deliver  them 
in  this  meeting-house  on  Thanksgiving  Day, 
provided  I  can  manage  to  write  them  without 
a  fire."  Ezra  Stiles,  afterwards  president  of 
Yale  and  one  of  the  ablest  men  of  his  day,  when 
a  minister  at  Dighton,  Massachusetts,  records 
in  his  diary,  with  gratitude  (March  14,  1777), 
that  he  is  not  in  debt  for  his  subsistence  during 
the  past  year  "  and  blessed  be  God  there  is 
some  Meal  in  the  Barrel  &  a  little  Oyl  in  the 
Cruise.  The  people  here  give  me  £60  a  year, 
House  &  wood." 
In  the  early  days,  the  "minister  tax"  was 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  179 

compulsory  and  averaged  twopence  on  the 
pound  of  a  man's  tax-list,  or  its  equivalent,  at 
the  market  value,  in  any  of  the  necessaries  of 
living.  The  sums  thus  realized  were  modest 
ones.  The  Reverend  Jedidiah  Mills,  who  for 
more  than  fifty  years  presided  over  the  meet- 
ing-house at  Huntington,  Connecticut,  received 
for  a  long  time  only  fifty  pounds  a  year.  The 
salary  of  his  colleague  at  the  Episcopal 
Church  of  the  same  town  was  fixed  in  1800 
at  "  one  hundred  pounds  lawful  money  and 
forty  loads  of  wood."  Most  ministers  had  large 
families,  too,  believing  that  they  should  set 
an  example  in  this  way.  Cotton  Mather,  who 
himself  had  fifteen  children,  records  with  no 
little  pride  some  of  the  large  families  of  his  day. 
He  tells  of  one  woman  who  had  twenty-two 
children  and  of  another  who,  having  borne 
twenty-three  children  to  one  man,  had  the 
courage,  mtrabUe  dictu,  to  take  unto  herself, 
upon  his  death,  another  devoted  spouse.  Still 
a  third  woman  instanced  by  Mather  bore  seven 
and  twenty  children.  Reverend  John  Sherman, 
of  Watertown,  Massachusetts,  had  twenty-six 
children  by  two  wives.  Reverend  Samuel  Wil- 
lard,  the  first  minister  of  Groton,  Massachusetts, 
had  twenty  children,  and  Reverend  Abijah 
Weld  of  Attleboro,  Massachusetts,  reared  fifteen 
children  and  a  grandchild  on  an  annual  salary 
of  about  two  hundred  and  twenty  dollars.  Rev- 


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180  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

erend  Moses  Fiske  had  sixteen  children  and  suc- 
cessfully married  off  three  daughters  and  sent 
three  sons  to  college,  all  on  a  salary  which 
ranged  from  sixty  to  ninety  pounds  and  was 
paid  chiefly  in  corn  and  wood. 

Ushering  babies  into  the  world  was  an  ex- 
pensive indulgence,  too,  in  the  early  days, 
for  the  reason  that  special  social  and  religious 
observances  accompanied  the  event.  Beer  in 
plenty  was  brewed  well  in  advance  of  the  birth. 
Judge  Sewall  speaks  of  preparing  "  groaning- 
beer  "  nearly  two  months  before  we  find  him 
recording  the  arrival  of  his  newest  offspring, 
and  there  is  a  tradition  that  "  groaning-cakes  " 
were  also  baked  to  serve  to  visitors  at  this 
time.  "  At  the  birth  of  their  children  they 
drink  a  glass  of  wine  and  eat  a  bit  of  a  certain 
cake,  which  is  seldom  made  but  upon  these  oc- 
casions ",  writes  the  Frenchman,  Misson,  in 
his  "  Travels  in  England  ",  and  from  various 
allusions  it  would  appear  that  this  custom  ob- 
tained in  New  England  also.  Anna  Green 
Winslow  writes  of  being  taken,  as  a  little  girl, 
to  make  a  "  setting  up  visit "  to  a  relative 
whose  baby  was  then  about  four  weeks  old. 
"  It  cost  me  a  pistareen  to  Nurse  Eaton  for  two 
cakes,  which  I  took  care  to  eat  before  I  paid 
for  them",  she  tells  us  quaintly;  a  pistareen  was 
about  seventeen  cents,  which  made  these 
nurse's  cakes  come  a  bit  high.    Money,  cloth- 


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OLD  NEW   ENGLAND  181 

ing,  and  petty  trinkets  were  always  given  to 
the  nurse  at  such  times,  and  it  was  also  custom- 
ary to  invite  for  dinner,  in  the  early  days  of 
the  young  child's  life,  the  midwife,  the  nurses, 
and  all  the  women  of  the  neighborhood  who  had 
helped  with  work  or  advice  during  the  "  groan- 
ing." One  Sewall  baby  was  scarcely  two  weeks 
old  when  seventeen  women  dined  at  the  Judge's 
house  on  boiled  pork,  beef,  and  fowls;  roast 
beef  and  turkey;  pies  and  tarts.  At  another 
time  "  minc'd  Pyes  and  cheese  '*  were  added 
to  the  menu,  and  sack  and  claret  were  often 
then  enjoyed. 

As  short  and  simple  as  the  annals  of  the  poor 
are  the  entries  which  tell  the  life  story  of  many 
a  godly  New  England  minister.  The  calling  of 
Reverend  Samuel  Hopkins,  who  married  a 
sister  of  the  celebrated  Jonathan  Edwards,  is 
thus  related  in  the  record  book  of  the  West 
Springfield,  Massachusetts,  parish,  which  he 
served  for  thirty-six  years.  The  facts,  as  here 
set  down,  are  interesting  because  they  show 
that  a  minister  was  procured  in  much  the  same 
manner  as  we  have  seen  to  be  the  case  when 
a  schoolmaster  was  needed. 

"  In  order  to  procuer  a  minister,  there  having 
been  much  discours  About  sending  for  a  min- 
ister and  whither  to  goe  toward  Boston  or  to 
send  to  the  lower  Colledg,  Benjamin  Smith 
(having  business  to  goe  to  Boston  as  was  sup- 


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182  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

posed)  made  an  offer  that  he  would  get  a  min- 
ister and  If  he  did  not,  would  have  notheing 
for  his  pains,  But  he  not  being  Redy  to  goe, 
It  was  Voted  and  Concluded  that  the  County 
should  take  care  to  send  by  the  first  oper- 
tunitye  toward  Boston  to  se  after  a  minister 
by  sum  man  that  was  goeing  that  way  about 
his  own  busines.  And  after  a  minister  ware 
obtained  to  pay  what  nesessary  charg  should 
be  expended  in  bringing  of  a  minister  but  not 
to  pay  anything  If  no  minister  Came.  But  only 
what  was  nesessary  for  the  minister's  charge,  not 
aloweing  anything  for  the  mans  Journey.  And 
that  the  present  Comitey  give  orders  to  the 
man  that  went  If  any  opertunity  presented." 

On  December  21  following  the  chronicler 
writes: 

"  Votes  made  and  past  To  alow  Deacon 
Parsons  and  Deacon  Ely  2  shillings  per  day  for 
9  days  a  piece  in  their  Journey  to  Boston  after 
a  minister  and  to  Deacon  Parsons  12  shillings 
for  his  horse  and  Deacon  Ely  10  shillings.  And 
to  Deacon  Parsons  10  shillings  for  his  time  to 
New  Haven  and  to  alow  for  ther  expences  the 
Sum  3-2-1  to  boston  and  new  haven."  As  a 
result  of  the  work  done  by  these  three  worthies 
—  and  the  horses  which  bore  them  on  their 
journeys  —  Reverend  Samuel  Hopkins,  on  Janu- 
ary 25,  1720,  was  invited  to  serve  the  parish 
at  West  Springfield. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  183 

I  have  found  do  record  of  an  ordination  ball 
on  the  occasion  of  Mr.  Hopkins'  installation  at 
West  Springfield,  but  there  is  still  in  existence 
a  letter  of  invitation,  written  by  Reverend 
Timothy  Edwards,  who  was  ordained  in  Wind- 
sor in  1694,. to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stoughton,  asking 
them  to  attend  the  ordination  ball  to  be  given 
in  his,  the  minister's  house;  this  may  very  well 
be  accepted  as  evidence  that  the  ministers  did 
not  universally  discountenance  dancing.  But 
though  there  might  or  might  not  be  an  ordina- 
tion ball,  there  was  always  an  ordination  sup- 
per with  "  Ordination  Beare  ",  "  pompions  ", 
"  turces  "  cooked  in  various  ways,  "  rhum  " 
and  "  cacks."  The  items  of  one  tavern-keeper's 
bill,  on  a  certain  ordination  occasion  held  in 
Hartford  in  1784,  show  quite  an  appalling  ex- 
penditure for  liquors  and  "  segars." 

We  must  remember,  as  we  marvel  on  this 
matter,  that  it  was  an  age  when  everybody 
drank.  And  an  "  ordination  journey  "  was  a 
great  event  in  the  life  of  a  minister.  Many  a 
weary  trip  was  his,  in  which  there  was  no  ele- 
ment of  junketing.  Often  the  parson  was  ex- 
posed to  very  real  dangers  as  he  went  about 
his  daily  work.  As  late  as  1776  it  was  voted 
by  the  town  of  Winthrop,  Maine,  to  pay  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Shaw  "  four  shillings  which  he 
paid  for  a  pilot  through  the  woods  when  he 
went  there  to  conduct  services."    Treading  a 


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184  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

dangerous  path  through  the  uncharted  forest 
played  a  much  larger  part  in  the  average  parson's 
life  than  "  segars  "  and  "  bitters  "  before  break- 
fast. So  while  we  relate,  because  it  is  amusing, 
the  story  of  the  Reverend  Ephraim  Judson, 
ninth  minister  of  Taunton,  Massachusetts,  of 
whom  it  is  told  that  on  hot  summer  Sundays 
he  would  give  out  the  longest  hymn  in  the  hymn- 
book  and  then  stroll  forth  and  stretch  out 
under  a  tree  while  his  perspiring  congregation 
toiled  through  their  involuntary  praise  of  the 
Lord,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  self-in- 
dulgence on  the  part  of  the  clergy  was  a  thing 
of  exceeding  rarity. 

"  The  Creature  called  Tobacko  "  had  never 
been  very  genially  welcomed  in  New  England, 
either  by  parson  or  people.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  colony's  history,  tobacco  was  forbidden 
to  be  planted  except  in  very  small  quantities 
"  for  meere  necessitie,  for  phisick,  for  preserva- 
tion of  health,  and  that  the  same  be  taken 
privatly  by  auncient  men."  The  law  of  Con- 
necticut permitted  a  man  to  smoke  once,  if  he 
went  on  a  journey  of  ten  miles,  but  never  more 
than  once  a  day  and  never  in  another  man's 
house.  And  concerning  the  use  of  tobacco  on 
the  Sabbath,  orders  were  severe  and  explicit 
throughout  New  England.  The  feeling  seems 
to  have  been  that  this  "  creature  "  was  a  good 
thing  of  which  too  much  use  might-  easily  be 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  185 

made.  Highly  virtuous  men,  like  Roger  Will- 
iams,1 employed  it  in  their  families  at  times 
of  sickness,  and  old  women  who  were  in  bad 
health  used  it  also.  There  is  quoted  in  an  ac- 
count of  Barnstable  an  old  letter,  in  which 
a  citizen  who  had  commanded  the  Plymouth 
forces  during  King  Philip's  War  declines,  be- 
cause of  his  wife's  ill  health.  Governor  Wins- 
low's  appointment  to  lead  an  expedition  against 
the  Dutch.   He  pleads: 

"  My  wife,  as  is  well  known  to  the  whole 
town,  is  not  only  a  weak  woman,  and  has  been 
so  all  along,  but  now,  by  reason  of  her  age, 
being  sixty-seven  years  and  upwards,  and  na- 
ture decaying,  so  her  illness  grows  more  strongly 
upon  her.  .  .  .  She  cannot  lie  for  want  of 
breath.  And  when  she  is  up,  she  cannot  light  a 
pipe  of  tobacco  but  it  must  be  lighted  for  her."  2 

Yet  though  a  man  could  not  smoke  on  the 
way  to  worship,  there  is  abundant  evidence 
that  he  enjoyed  the  journey  as  he  jolted  along 
on  his  sturdy  farm  horse,  with  his  wife  perched 
on  the  pillion  behind  him,  across  the  fields  and 
through  the  narrow  bridle-paths  which  led  to 
the  meeting-house  on  the  hill  or  to  the  church 
green  in  the  village. 

1  We  find  Roger  Williams  writing  Winthrop  in  1660:  "  My 
youngest  son,  Joseph,  was  troubled  with  a  spice  of  an  epilepsy 
.  ./but  it  has  pleased  God,  by  his  taking  of  tobacco,  perfectly,  as 
we  hope,  to  cure  him." 

*  "Historic  Towns  of  New  England,"  p.  390.   C.  P.  Putnam's 


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186  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

As  he  drew  near  to  the  house  of  worship,  a 
fillip  might  be  given  to  his  comfort  and  self- 
complacency  by  contemplation  of  the  stocks, 
the  pillory,  and  the  whipping-post,  which  were 
often  placed  in  close  juxtaposition  to  the  church 
building  —  very  likely  because  offenders  against 
the  laws  of  the  State  were  always  held  to  have 
broken  the  higher  law  also.  Nor  were  these 
very  cruel  modes  of  punishment  so  infrequently 
in  use  as  some  historians  would  have  us  think. 
We  find  by  the  records  that  at  Taunton,  Mas- 
sachusetts, on  a  bright  May  training-day  of 
1656  Alexander  Aimes  sat  in  the  stocks,  a 
Scotchman  was  publicly  whipped,  and  Kath- 
eren  Aimes  stood  on  the  church  green  wearing 
on  her  breast  the  shameful  scarlet  letter  which 
Hawthorne  has  so  poignantly  immortalized 
in  his  story  about  Hester  Prynne.  All  this  on 
a  single  day!  And  examples  might  easily  be 
multiplied. 

The  Reverend  Samuel  Peters,  in  his  deeply 
resented  "  History  of  Connecticut  ",  declared 
that  the  people  of  that  State  were  wont  to  look 
very  sour  and  sad  on  the  eve  of  the  Sabbath,  — 
as  if  they  had  lost  their  dearest  friends.  "  Here 
they  observe  the  Sabbath  with  more  exactness 
than  did  the  Jews  ",  he  wrote.  "  A  Quaker 
preacher  told  them,  with  much  truth,  that 
they  worshipped  the  Sabbath  and  not  the  God 
of  the  Sabbath.     Whereupon,  without  charity, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  187 

these  hospitable  people  condemned  the  Quaker 
as  a  blasphemer  of  the  holy  Sabbath,  fined, 
tarred,  and  feathered  him,  put  a  rope  about  his 
neck,  and  plunged  him  into  the  sea." 

Another  of  Peters'  delectable  stories  about 
Sabbath-breaking  in  Connecticut  is  to  the 
effect  that  in  1750  "  an  episcopal  clergyman, 
born  and  educated  in  England,  who  had  been  in 
holy  orders  above  twenty  years,  broke  their  sab- 
batical law  by  combing  a  lock  of  discomposed 
hair  on  the  top  of  his  wig;  at  another  time, 
for  making  a  humming  noise  which  they  called 
whistling;  at  a  third  time,  by  walking  too  fast 
from  church;  at  a  fourth,  by  running  into 
church  when  it  rained;  at  a  fifth,  by  walking  in 
his  garden  and  picking  a  bunch  of  grapes:  for 
which  several  times  he  was  complained  of  by 
the  Grand  Jury,  had  warrants  granted  against 
him,  was  seized,  brought  to  trial,  and  paid  a 
considerable  sum  of  money." 

Even  the  Sunday-school,  when  first  intro- 
duced, was  regarded  in  New  England  as  a  pro- 
fanation of  the  Sabbath!  In  the  Newburyport 
Herald  of  January  12,  1791,  may  be  found 
an  account  of  the  establishment  of  Sunday- 
schools  in  Philadelphia  by  some  benevolent 
persons  in  the  city,  with  this  comment:  "  Pity 
their  benevolence  did  not  extend  so  far  as  to 
afford  them  tuition  on  days  when  it  is  lawful 
to  follow  such  pursuits,  and  not  thereby  lay 


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188  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

a  foundation  for  the  profanation  of  the  Sab- 
bath." This  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Sunday- 
schools  here,  as  in  England,  where  Robert 
Raikes  started  them  in  1780,  were  instituted 
for  the  express  purpose  of  teaching  poor  children 
to  read  in  order  that  they  might  learn  their 
Catechism  or  study  the  Bible. 

Yet  the  very  New  England  which  frowned 
upon  Sunday-schools  welcomed  the  Jew. 

Nothing  in  our  early  history  is  more  inter- 
esting than  the  hospitality  accorded  by  New- 
port, in  1658  or  thereabouts,  to  the  little  com- 
pany of  Hebrews  who  then  first  came  there  to 
live.  Yeshuat  Israel,  or  Salvation  of  Israel, 
in  Newport,  is  said  to  be  the  oldest  Jewish  con- 
gregation in  America;  and  the  synagogue  on 
Touro  Street,  which  was  organized  in  1680, 
antedates  any  other  on  the  North  American  con- 
tinent. In  1769,  out  of  the  eleven  thousand  in- 
habitants of  Newport,  three  hundred  were  Jews; 
which  inspired  Cotton  Mather  in  his  "  Mag- 
nalia  "  to  characterize  the  town  as  "  the  com- 
mon receptacle  of  the  convicts  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  outcasts  of  the  land." 

Mather  in  this  passage  once  again  shows 
himself  constitutionally  disqualified  to  write 
history.  For  the  first  band  of  Hebrews  who 
made  their  homes  in  Newport  were  men  of 
great  cultivation  and  enlightenment.  Their 
numbers  were  augmented  in  1694  by  a  number 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  189 

of  families  from  Curacoa  or  one  of  the  adja- 
cent islands  in  the  West  Indies,  the  General 
Assembly  of  Rhode  Island  having  voted  ten 
years  before  in  favor  of  allowing  Jews  to 
settle  in  their  colony.  It  was  felt  that  these 
people  made  exceedingly  desirable  citizens. 
That  they  contributed  notably  to  the  great 
commercial  success  of  Newport  by  the  trade- 
secrets  they  brought  with  them  is  a  well  estab- 
lished fact.  The  rendering  of  spermaceti  by 
a  new  method  which  they  introduced  was  es- 
pecially appreciated  in  a  society  which  had 
hitherto  been  forced  to  depend  for  light  on 
home-made  candles  of  bayberry  wax. 

The  earthquake  at  Lisbon  and  the  Inquisition 
in  Spain  were  responsible  for  adding  many  more 
Jews  to  the  population  of  Newport  about  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Among 
those  who  came  at  this  time  was  Reverend 
Isaac  Touro,  first  minister  of  the  synagogue 
which  still  stands  half-way  up  the  hill  over- 
looking the  harbor  of  Newport.  Peter  Harri- 
son, who  was  the  architect  of  this  building, 
carefully  conformed  to  the  rules  for  erecting 
such  sacred  houses,  with  the  result  that  the 
building  is  on  an  elevation,  fronts  due  south,  re- 
gardless of  the  line  of  the  adjoining  street,  and 
is  so  planned  that  worshippers  face  the  east 
when  praying.  The  edifice  was  also  provided 
with  an  oven,  in  which  all  the  unleavened  bread 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  191 

but  its  interior  is  practically  unchanged,  and 
here  may  be  seen  to-day  the  only  three-decked 
pulpit  remaining  in  New  England,  and  the 
only  surviving  pulpit  of  any  pattern  from  which 
the  Bishop  of  Cloyne  ever  preached.  Mr.  Hony- 
man  was  holding  a  service  in  Trinity  when 
Dean  Berkeley,  as  he  was  then,  arrived  in  New- 
port and  announced  himself  in  impressive  fash- 
ion. A  messenger  climbed  the  steep  hill  on 
which  the  churoh  stands  and  handed  to  the 
verger  a  letter  which  looked  so  important  that 
that  functionary,  clad  in  his  long  black  robe 
and  holding  a  staff  in  his  hand,  marched  up 
the  center  aisle  and  solemnly  handed  the  com- 
munication to  the  officiating  priest.  Mr.  Hony- 
man  opened  the  letter  and  read  it,  first  to  him- 
self, and  then  aloud.  In  it  the  celebrated  wan- 
derer announced  that  he  was  about  to  land  in 
Newport  on  his  way  to  the  West  Indies.  Im- 
mediately the  entire  congregation  adjourned 
to  meet  and  escort  to  the  church  "  Pious 
Cloyne,"  as  Berkeley  was  later  called. 

The  organ  of  Trinity  Church  was  that  de- 
signed by  Berkeley  for  the  Massachusetts  town 
which  bears  his  name.  When  this  commu- 
nity rejected  the  gift  on  the  ground  that  "an 
organ  is  an  instrument  of  the  devil  for  the  en- 
trapping of  men's  souls  ",  Trinity  Church  fell 
heir  to  the  donation. 

How  unspeakably  tragic  it  was  felt  to  be  in 


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192 


SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


old  New  England  when  any  one  of  Puritan 
blood  became  a  convert  to  Rome  is  seen  in  the 
pained  and  scanty  references  to  the  romantic 
fate  of  Eunice  Williams,  daughter  of  "  the  re- 
deemed captive  u,  and  sister  of  the  Reverend 
Stephen  Williams  of  Longmeadow.  During 
the  sack  of  Deerfield,  in  1714,  the  whole  Will- 
iams family  had  been  taken  captive  by  the 
Indians,  but  after  a  lapse  of  years  all  returned 
from  Canada  except  Eunice,  who  had  there 
espoused  the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  and,  while 
still  very  young,  married  an  Indian  chief  of  the 
Iroquois  tribe.  Every  effort  was  made  by  her 
relatives  to  induce  her  to  leave  her  Indian  family, 
but  she  would  not  come  back,  even  for  a  visit, 
until  1740.  In  August  of  that  year,  Parson 
Williams  of  Longmeadow,  a  Harvard  graduate, 
was  notified  that  Eunice  Williams  was  in 
Albany.  At  once  he  set  off  to  meet  his  sister, 
accompanied  by  his  brother-in-law,  another 
parson.  In  his  diary  he  records  that  their  re- 
union was  a  "joyful,  sorrowful  one."  The  en- 
tire party,  which  included  Eunice,  her  husband, 
her  two  children,  and  some  friends,  were  on 
this  occasion  induced  to  come  to  Longmeadow 
for  a  visit,  and,  as  might  have  been  supposed, 
"  ye  whole  place  was  greatly  moved  "  thereby. 
Now  Eunice  had  been  only  five  when  torn 
from  her  Puritan  background;  yet  it  was  con- 
fidently expected  that  she  would  abandon  her 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND 


193 


Romish  faith  immediately  upon  being  exposed 
to  "  publick  worship  with  us"!  The  utmost 
astonishment  prevailed  because  she  did  no 
such  thing.  Though  she  came  to  New  England 
three  times  after  this  first  visit,  al!  attempts 
to  make  her  settle  in  the  country  or  renounce 
her  adopted  religion  were  in  vain.  It  will  be 
understood  that  "  the  heathen  "  were  prayed 
for  with  especial  fervor  in  Stephen  Williams' 
pulpit. 

Very  likely  it  was  held  to  be  an  answer  to 
these  prayers  that  in  1800  Thomas  Williams, 
Eunice's  grandson,  brought  to  Longmeadow 
to  be  educated  two  lads  he  called  his  sons. 
No  one  ever  questioned  the  Indian  paternity 
of  John,  who  was  seven  at  this  time.  But  the 
family  background  of  Eleazar  Williams,  the 
other  boy,  a  lad  whose  age  could  not  easily  be 
determined  and  who  had  absolutely  no  Indian 
characteristics  in  form  or  feature,  was  then, 
and  has  ever  since  remained,  a  mystery.  The 
oft-repeated  story  that  he  was  the  lost  Dauphin 
of  France  has  served  to  bathe  in  a  romantic 
glow  the  austere  outlines  of  the  meeting-house 
.  at  Longmeadow,  near  Springfield,  Massachu- 
setts, with  which  his  boyhood  days  were  inti- 
mately associated. 

Sometimes  these  old  New  England  meeting- 
houses are  sought  out  by  interested  visitors 
from  afar  because  of  their  unusual  architectural 


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194  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

beauty.  This  is  true  of  the  First  Church  at 
Bennington,  Vermont,  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful existing  examples  of  the  Christopher  Wren 
style  in  church  edifices.  Erected  in  1805,  the 
present  building  carries  oruthe  traditions  of  the 
oldest  church  in  Vermont,  that  which  was  here 
organized  in  1763  with  Reverend  Jedidiah 
Dewey  as  its  pastor.  Colonel  Ethan  Allen  oc- 
casionally worshipped  in  Mr.  Dewey's  con- 
gregation, but  being  inclined  to  free-thinking, 
sometimes  took  issue  with  statements  made  in 
the  pulpit.  Once,  when  some  remark  in  the 
discourse  displeased  him,  he  rose  in  his  place  at 
the  head  of  a  prominent  pew  in  the  broad  aisle, 
and  saying  in  audible  tones:  "It's  not  so", 
started  to  leave  the  building.  Whereupon 
Parson  Dewey,  lifting  up  his  right  hand  and 
pointing  with  his  forefinger  directly  at  Colonel 
Allen,  said:  "  Sit  down,  thou  bold  blasphemer,  and 
listen  to  the  word  of  God."  Ethan  Allen  sat  down 
and  listened. 

Another  good  Ethan  Allen  story  '  is  told  in 
connection  with  a  certain  Father  Marshall, 
who  frequently  preached  in  Vermont  and  was 
once  the  guest  for  the  night  at  the  home  of  the 
doughty  colonel.  In  the  morning  the  parson 
was  duly  called  upon  to  attend  family  prayers. 
Had  he  been  less  quick-witted,  he  might  have 
been  somewhat  disturbed  at  having  handed  to 

1  "  Memorials  of  a  Century,"  by  Isaac  Jennings. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  196 

him  an  atheistical  book  of  Allen's,  called  "  Ora- 
cles of  Reason",  its  author  remarking:  "This 
is  my  bible.  I  suppose  you  have  no  objection 
to  read  out  of  my  bible." 

The  reverend  guest  replied:  "  Let  us  sing  a 
few  verses  first;  have  you  any  objection  to  the 
common  psalm-book?  " 

"  Not  at  all,"  said  the  host. 

Whereupon  Mr.  Marshall,  taking  up  the 
psalm-book  which  lay  upon  the  table,  selected 
and  proceeded  to  read  the  psalm  beginning  with 
the  stanza: 

"  Let  all  the  heathen  writers  join 
To  form  one  perfect  book,  — 
Great  God,  if  once  compared  with  thine, 
How  mean  their  writings  look! " 

Allen,  who  was  more  man  than  infidel,  ex- 
claimed at  once  with  great  cordiality  and  frank- 
ness: "  Floored,  Father  Marshall;  take  your 
own  Bible." 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


CHAPTER  V 

GETTING   MARRIED 

NO  one  who  reads  history  intelligently 
can  have  failed  to  observe  that  morals, 
as  well  as  social  customs,  are  inextricably 
bound  up  with  climatic  conditions,  transporta- 
tion facilities,  and  the  current  standards  of  liv- 
ing. The  fact  that  Madam  Knight,  when  making 
her  renowned  journey  from  Boston  to  New  York 
in  1704,  frequently  shared  her  sleeping-room 
with  strange  men  —  travelers  like  herself  — 
does  not  at  all  mean  that  this  estimable  Boston 
schoolmistress  was  a  lady  of  light  morals,  but 
simply  that  the  exigencies  of  the  situation  and 
the  customs  of  the  time  made  necessary  this, 
to  us,  revolting  custom.  In  a  similar  way  we 
may  account  for  the  much  more  revolting  cus- 
tom of  bundling,  as  it  was  called,  which  so 
frequently  prefaced  marriage  in  old  New  Eng- 
land. Historians  generally  are  inclined  to  touch 
lightly  if  at  all  on  this  phase  of  our  early  social 
life,  feeling,  very  likely,  that  to  give  such  an 
institution  the  prominence  it  really  possessed 
would  be  to  detract  from  the  dignity  of  their 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  197 

narrations.  My  excuse  for  taking  a  somewhat 
different  attitude  on  this  matter  must,  if  an 
excuse  is  needed,  lie  in  the  contention  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson  was  wont  to  make:  that 
the  truth  of  history  is  a'  sacred  thing,  a  thing 
far  more  important  than  its  dignity. 

The  almost  systematic  suppression  of  evi- 
dence in  regard  to  the  laxity  of  sexual  relations 
in  early  New  England  is  particularly  to  be  con- 
demned for  the  reason  that  contemporary  litera- 
ture repeatedly  refers  with  utter  frankness  to 
bundling  as  a  social  custom.  In  The  Contrast, 
one  of  the  earliest  of  American  plays,  which 
was  written  by  Royall  Tyler,  a  New  Englander, 
and  first  produced  at  the  John  Street  Theater 
in  New  York  in  1787,'  Jonathan,  when  roundly 
snubbed  for  philandering  with  Jenny,  declares 
thoughtfully  that  if  that  is  the  way  city  ladies 
act,-  he  will  continue  to  prefer  his  Tabitha, 
with  her  twenty  acres  of  rock,  her  Bible,  a 
cow,  and  "  a  little  peaceable  bundling."  Again, 
Mrs.  John  Adams,  in  a  letter  written  in 
1784  to  her  elder  sister,  Mrs.  Cranch,  re- 
fers to  this  custom  in  quite  as  casual  a  way 
as  we  might  to-day  to  analogous  moral 
lapses  among  people  whose  plane  of  intelli- 
gence is  not  quite  ours.  "  Necessity,"  she 
says,  as  she  describes  the  common  cabin  of  the 
sailing-vessel  in  which  she  is  just  then  crossing 

1  See  my  "  Romance  of  the  American  Theatre,"  p.  93. 


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,  198  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

the  Atlantic,  "  necessity  has  no  law;  but  should 
I  have  thought  on  shore  to  have  laid  myself 
down  in  common  with  half  a  dozen  gentlemen? 
We  have  curtains,  it  is  true,  and  we  only  in  part 
undress,  —  about  as  much  as  the  Yankee  bun- 
dlers." 

Bundling,  it  should  be  understood,  was  not 
regarded  as  an  immoral  custom;  it  was  a  prac- 
tice growing  out  of  the  primitive  social  and  in- 
dustrial conditions  of  the  times,  and  was  toler- 
ated, if  not  encouraged  in  the  country  districts 
as  a  means  of  promoting  matrimony.  Two 
young  people  who  intended  to  marry  lived  far 
apart  and  worked  early  and  late  all  the  week. 
Only  on  Saturday  evening  and  Sunday  could 
they  meet  for  love-making.  Accordingly,  on 
the  eve  of  the  Sabbath,  the  man  would  journey 
to  the  home  of  his  beloved  and,  quite  regularly, 
stay  there  until  Sunday.  Throughout  the  eve- 
ning they  would  be  able  to  see  each  other  only 
in  the  presence  of  the  family,  for  houses  were 
small  and  fires  were  a  luxury.  The  one  fire 
which  most  people  could  afford  usually  burned 
in  the  kitchen,  and  the  ordinary  farm-family 
could  not  afford  to  burn  this  after  nine  or  ten 
o'clock.  Hence  the  girl  and  her  lover  were 
bundled  up  together,  after  the  others  had  re- 
tired for  the  night,  often  on  the  extra  trundle- 
bed  which  most  kitchens  then  contained,  in 
order  that  they  might  keep  warm  and  enjoy 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  199 

each  other's  company  without  waste  of  light  or 
fuel.  There  appears  to  have  been  no  secrecy 
about  the  practice;  the  very  "  bundling  "  was 
frequently  done  by  the  mother  or  sister  of 
the  girl  who  was  being  thus  "courted."  And, 
in  theory,  at  any  rate,  the  couple  wore  their 
clothing.  None  the  less,  the  practice  was  fre- 
quently responsible  for  the  birth  of  a  child  very 
soon  after  the  young  people  had  been  made  one 
in  marriage.  On  this  account  it  was  that  the 
church  established  what  was  known  as  "  the 
seven  months  rule  ",  a  rule,  that  is,  that  a  child 
born  within  seven  months  after  the  marriage 
of  its  parents  should  not  be  accorded  baptism 
(lacking  which  it  was  damned  if  it  died)  unless 
the  parents  made  public  confession  of  and  ex- 
pressed penitence  for  the  "  sin  of  fornication 
before  marriage."  The  records  of  the  Groton 
(Massachusetts)  Church  show  that  in  this  one 
small  town  no  less  than  sixty-six  couples  so 
confessed  between  1761  and  1775.  Nor  is  this 
an  exceptional  showing.  In  the  history  of 
Dedham,  Braintree,  and  many  other  country 
towns,  similar  data  may  be  found.  Charles 
Francis  Adams  has  called  attention 1  to  the  in- 
teresting fact  that  in  Braintree,  at  any  rate, 
the  period  during  which  the  greatest  number 
of  confessions  of  "  fornication  before  marriage  " 


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200  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

occurred  was  precisely  that  of  "  the  Great 
Awakening."  He  would  thus  seem  to  believe 
that  a  very  close  relationship  existed  between 
the  morbid  spiritual  experiences  for  which  the 
great  and  good  Jonathan  Edwards  was  prima- 
rily responsible,  and  the  "  tide  of  immorality  " 
which  then  conspicuously  "  rolled  over  the 
land." 

Bundling  did  not  by  any  means  originate  in 
New  England,  it  should,  however,  be  under- 
stood. Doctor  H.  R.  Stiles,  who  has  published 
an  authoritative  monograph  on  this  subject, 
shows  that  the  practice  is  Teutonic  in  its  origin; 
and  establishes  the  fact,  too,  that  it  survived 
in  North  Wales  and  in  Holland  long  after  it 
was  discountenanced  in  New  England.  He 
also  shows  that  in  no  part  of  New  England  was 
the  custom  more  prevalent  than  on  Cape  Cod, 
and  that  it  held  out  longest  there  against  the 
advance  of  more  refined  manners. 

One  interesting  outgrowth  of  the  custom 
was  the  arbitrary  refusal  of  the  clergy  for  many 
years  to  baptize  infants  born  on  the  Sabbath, 
there  being  an  ancient  superstition  that  a  child 
born  on  the  Sabbath  was  also  conceived  on  the 
Sabbath.  Often  this  worked  a  gross  injustice. 
Not  until  a  Massachusetts  parson  of  the  high- 
est character  became  the  father  of  twins  on  the 
Sabbath  was  this  discrimination  corrected;  the 
worthy  minister  concerned  then  made  public 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  201 

confession  that  he  had  previously  been  unjust 
and  unfair  in  refusing  to  baptize  Sabbath-bora 
babies. 

Bundling  came  nearest  to  being  a  universal 
custom  among  farming  folks  in  New  England 
from  1750  to  1780;  but  it  was  at  all  times  re- 
garded by  the  better  classes  as  a  serious  evil. 
It  is  often  attributed  to  Connecticut  as  if  pecul- 
iar to  that  State;  but  this  is  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  certain  Connecticut  historians  have 
dealt  very  frankly  with  the  custom.1 

In  the  Connecticut  with  which  bundling  is 
so  largely  associated,  another  and  much  better 
way  was  ultimately  found  in  which  to  carry  on 
the  courtship  in  spite  of  hampering  circum- 
stances. This  was  by  the  use  of  a  "  courting- 
stick  ",  a  hollow  stick  about  an  inch  in  diameter 
and  six  or  eight  feet  long,  fitted  with  mouth-  and 
ear-pieces,  by  means  of  which  lovers  could  ex- 
change their  tender  vows  while  seated  on  either 
side  of  the  fireplace  in  the  presence  of  the  entire 
family. 

Publishing  the  banns  three  times  in  the 
meeting-house,  at  either  town  meeting,  weekly 
lecture,  or  Sunday  service,  was  a  custom  en- 
forced throughout  New  England,  except  in 
New  Hampshire,  for  nearly  two  centuries.  The 
names  of  the  contracting  parties  were  not  only 
read  out  by  the  town  clerk,  the  deacon,  or  the 
1  See  "  History  of  Ancient  Windsor,"  p.  496. 


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202  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

minister,  but  a  notice  of  the  same  was  placed 
on  the  church  door,  or  on  a  "  publishing  post." 
Yet  the  minister,  so  powerful  in  many  ways, 
could  not,  in  the  early  days,  perform  the  mar- 
riage ceremony.  That  had  to  be  done,  until 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by  a 
magistrate. 

No  rings  were  used,  it  is  interesting  to  know, 
for  these  magistrate-made  marriages  of  early 
days.  Mather  was  strongly  averse  to  the  use 
of  rings,  and  another  writer  has  characterized 
rings,  when  used  for  weddings,  as  "  a  Diabolhe- 
all  Circle  for  the  Divell  to  daunce  in."  With 
or  without  a  ring,  it  was  only  a  self-protective 
measure  for  a  young  man  to  marry  as  soon  as 
he  could.  The  State,  which  had  a  hand  in  most 
things,  surrounded  the  bachelor  with  a  system 
of  espionage  which  must  have  been  anything 
but  comfortable.  Young  unmarried  men  were 
not  allowed  to  keep  house  together  and  were 
made,  as  boarders  in  the  homes  of  others,  to 
feel  that  they  were  but  poor  and  unproduc- 
tive things  uselessly  cumbering  the  earth. 

Very  likely  that  youth  in  Hopkinton,  New 
Hampshire,  who  somewhat  uncouthly  married 
by  capture  the  girl  of  his  choice,  had  been  sub- 
jected to  a  protracted  season  of  snubbing  for 
not  having  taken  unto  himself  a  wife.  He  first 
saw  his  future  spouse  at  the  beginning,  it  is 
said,  of  an  ordination  sermon;  probably  he  felt, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  203 

alter  the  "  thirteenthly  "  had  been  expounded, 
that  he  had  known  and  loved  her  a  long  time. 
At  any  rate,  he  rushed  through  the  crowd  the 
minute  the  benediction  was  pronounced,  and 
seizing  her  in  his  arms,  declared  ardently: 
"  Now  I  have  got  ye,  you  jade,  I  have,  I  HAVE." 
And  the  words  that  he  spoke  were  true  words; 
the  shrinking  modesty  of  the  Puritan  maiden 
was  conspicuous,  in  this  case  at  any  rate,  by 
its  absence.  Sammy  Samples  and  Elizabeth 
Allen  of  Manchester,  Massachusetts,  were  aided 
in  their  wooing  by  a  dream,  which  came  to 
him  in  Scotland  and  to  her  in  her  New  Eng- 
land home.  She,  too,  was  in  "  meetin'  "  when 
her  lover  first  .clapped  his  eye  upon  her.  And 
she  likewise  made  no  difficulties.  Later,  when 
left  a  widow,  Elizabeth  married  Colonel  Crafts 
of  Revolutionary  fame  and  kept  a  thriving  inn. 
Even  then  hers  was  an  adventurous  and  color- 
ful life.  Once,  when  sailing  on  a  packet  to 
Boston  for  her  supplies,  and  improving  her 
time  by  knitting,  the  sail  of  her  craft  veered 
suddenly  and  she  was  plunged  into  the  sea. 
Tradition  says  she  still  kept  on  knitting  and 
took  seven  stitches  under  water  before  being 
rescued. 

Wooings  brought  tardily  to  a  successful  cli- 
max by  the  tactful  intervention  of  the  woman 
were  no  less  frequent  then,  probably,  than  they 
are   now.     Puritan    Priscilla   inquiring   shyly: 


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204  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

"  Why  don't  you  speak  for  yourself,  John?  ** 
may  be  poetic  license,  but  it  is  a  welt  authen- 
ticated historical  fact  that  Ursula  Wolcott, 
daughter  of  Governor  Roger  Wolcott  of  Con- 
necticut, quite  pointedly  suggested  the  all-im- 
portant question  to  her  second  cousin,  Matthew 
Griswold,  also  a  Connecticut  governor. 

In  early  life  Governor  Griswold  had  been 
passionately  in  love  with  a  young  lady  of  Dur- 
ham, Connecticut,  who,  in  her  turn,  ^  was 
enamoured  of  a  physician,  whom  she  hoped 
would  propose  to  her.  Whenever  Griswold 
pressed  his  suit,  she  pleaded  that  she  wished 
for  more  time.  After  he  had  been  told  this  re- 
peatedly, her  suitor  one  day  said,  with  dignity: 
"  You  shall  have  more  time;  you  shall  have  a 
life-time.**  And  so  he  left  her.  But  he  suffered 
sorely,  and  ofttimes,  to  ease  his  aching  heart, 
spoke  of  her  whom  he  had  loved  to  his  sweet- 
faced  cousin  Ursula,  who 

"  sat  breathless,  cowed 
Beneath  resentment  stern  and  deep, 
Stirred  from  his  long  enduring  soul." 

After  a  time,  however,  Matthew  began  to  think 
a  good  deal  about  the  charms  of  this  sympa- 
thetic young  cousin,  yet,  dreading  another 
repulse,  he  looked  but  did  not  speak  his  love. 
Often  Ursula  would  break  the  silence  by  ob- 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  205 

serving  gently:  "  What  said  you,  Cousin  Mat- 
thew?" To  which,  suddenly  panic-stricken, 
he  invariably  replied:   "  I  said  nothing." 

Then  one  day,  feeling  that  she  must,  Ursula 
precipitated  the  climax,  according  to  Charles 
Knowles  Bolton,1  who  has  versified  the  story 
and  gives  us  its  final  chapter  thus: 

"  And  Matthew  riding  toward  the  door 
Heard  her  fight  step  upon  the  stairs 
And  entering  he  found  her  there. 
She  leaned  upon  the  bannister 
With  fingers  clasped  about  the  spindles; 
And  tears,  he  saw,  were  lingering 
To  dim  her  eyes. 

"  His  pulse  was  quick, 
And  yet  he  checked  his  eagerness. 

*  It  surely  cannot  be,'  he  thought, 

*  It  could  not  be  that  she  would  care.' 
The  clock  beat  loudly  through  the  hall 
To  make  the  stillness  yet  more  still. 
And  Ursula,  with  steady  voice 

That  trembled  ere  the  words  were  done, 
Began:  *  What  said  you,  Cousin  Matthew? ' 
And  he,  as  one  who  comes  almost 
To  comprehend,  said  thoughtfully: 

*  I  did  say  nothing,  Ursula.* 

The  colour  faded  from  her  cheeks; 
She  spoke  so  timidly  and  low 
He  scarcely  heard  her  plaintive  words 
'  'Tis  time  you  did.'  " 

1  "  The  Love  Story  of  Ursula  Wolcott."  Lanwon,  Wolffe  and  Co. 


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206  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

A  daughter,  also  named  Ursula,  who  was 
born  to  these  lovers,  grew  up  to  be  a  great 
beauty.  She,  too,  married  a  cousin  somewhat 
removed,  —  Lynde  McCurdy,  of  Norwich,  Con- 
necticut. Roger  Griswold,  the  son  of  Ursula 
and  of  her  shy  husband,  became  in  his  turn 
governor  of  Connecticut,  as  his  father  and 
grandfather  had  been  before  him. 

The  romantic  love  story  of  Agnes  Surriage 
and  Sir  Harry  Frankland  has  come  to  be  a  part 
of  our  New  England  tradition.  But  concerning 
the  equally  romantic  marriage  of  Sir  John 
Sterling  to  Glorianna  Fulsom,  daughter  of  a 
blacksmith  of  Stratford,  Connecticut,  the  facts 
are  scarcely  known.  Glorianna,  when  a  beauti- 
ful maiden  of  sixteen,  was  wooed  and  won  by  a 
handsome  visitor  to  Stratford,  who  declared 
himself  to  be  the  son  of  a  Scotch  baronet. 
After  their  marriage  (March  10,  1771),  the 
bridegroom  wrote  home  for  funds,  but,  no 
funds  coming,  he  began  to  teach  school,  just 
as  if  he  had  been  a  true  Yankee,  to  support  his 
blooming  young  wife.  Then,  when  one  daughter 
had  been  born  to  the  happy  couple,  the  hus- 
band and  father  sailed  away  to  Scotland. 

Gossip  said  that  the  young  wife  had  been 
deserted  and  would  never  see  or  hear  from  her 
Scotch  baronet  again.  A  sad  time  this  for 
Glorianna,  who  soon  brought  into  the  world  a 
second   daughter.      One    day,    however,    there 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  207 

came  a  letter  from  the  absent  one  with  the  news 
that  a  ship  fitted  for  the  special  comfort  of  his 
wife  would  be  in  New  York  at  a  certain  time 
and  had  been  engaged  to  convey  her  to  Scot- 
land in  the  best  style  possible.  Shortly  after- 
wards arrived  a  quantity  of  goods  of  elegant 
material,  from  which,  her  husband  directed, 
Glorianna  must  have  a  suitable  outfit  made  in 
New  York.  Servants  came,  too,  who  were 
charged  with  the  duty  of  making  all  prepara- 
tions for  this  momentous  journey  as  easy  as 
possible  for  the  young  wife  and  mother.  The 
lavishness  of  Mr.  Sterling's  care  for  his  lovely 
wife  even  extended  to  an  invitation  and  an 
outfit  for  Glorianna's  sister,  if  she  chose  to 
make  the  journey.  But  this  offer  was  declined, 
and  Glorianna  set  'sail,  unaccompanied  by  any 
of  her  kith  and  kin,  for  her  life  across  the  sea. 

When  the  ship  landed  in  Scotland,  the  wharf 
was  found  to  be  fairly  crowded  with  carriages 
come  to  meet  Mrs.  Sterling.  And  after  her  ar- 
rival, Glorianna  learned  that  a  whole  corps  of 
governesses  were  in  the  house  to  teach  her  the 
accomplishments  befitting  the  future  lady  of 
Sterling  Castle.  So,  though  she  never  returned 
to  America  or  saw  again  any  of  her  own  folk  — 
except  two  brothers,  who  some  years  later 
went  over  to  make  her  a  visit  —  she  lived  happy 
ever  after,  —  and  bore  her  husband  twenty-two 
children.    In  1791,  she  became  Baroness  Ster- 


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208  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

Hug.  Playfair's  Baronetage  shows  that  one  of 
her  sons  succeeded  to  the  title,  and  that  her 
descendants  held  important  offices  in  Scotland 
as  late  as  1879. 

Save  for  Glorianna  and  Agnes  Surriage  all 
the  belles  of  colonial  times  appear  to  have  been 
widows;  certainly  'they  were  seldom  young 
girls,  as  happened  a  generation  ago,  or  "  the 
woman  of  forty  ",  as  is  often  the  case  to-day. 
Mrs.  Alice  Morse  Earle  has  humorously  ex- 
pressed her  wonder  that  any  men  were  ever 
found  in  the  first  instance  to  marry  a  mere  girl. 
Yet  though  so  many  widows  '  became  brides, 
there  were  still  vast  numbers  of  them  left.  In 
1698  Boston  was  said  to  be  "  full  of  widows 
and  orphans,  and  many  of  them  very  helpless 
creatures."  No  less  than  one-sixth  of  the  com- 
municants of  Cotton  Mather's  church  were 
widows,  and  the  bewildering  array  of  widows 
among  whom  Judge  Sewall  had  to  choose, 
when  confronted  with  the  necessity  of  finding 
himself  a  new  partner,  has  become  a  New  Eng- 
land byword. 

Peter  Sargent,  who  built  the  beautiful  Prov- 
ince House  in  Boston,  had  married  three 
widows  before  he  died  in  1714.  And  his  second 
wife  had  been  three  times  a  widow  before  Peter 
married   her!     His  third  wife,  a  widow   when 

1  The  very  first  marriage  that  took  place  in  New  England  was 
between  a  widower  and  a  widow,  Edward  Window  ana  S 
White.    This  was  on  May  12,  1621. 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  209 

she  became  Mrs.  Sargent,  outlived  Peter  and 
then  outlived  the  man  she  later  married.  So 
that  she  was  finally  three  times  a  widow. 

Women  became  "  old  maids  "  at  an  exceed- 
-  ingly  early  age  in  colonial  New  England.  Hig- 
ginson  wrote  of  one  "  antient  maid  "  who  was 
twenty-five,  and  John  Dunton's  classic  "  Virgin  " 
was  only  twenty-six,  though  she  had  already 
reached  the  age  to  be  called  a  "Thomback." 
"An  old  (or  Superannuated)  Maid,"  writes  this 
gay  Lothario,  "  is  thought  such  a  curse  in  Bos- 
ton as  nothing  can  exceed  it,  and  looked  on  as 
a  Dismal  Spectacle,  yet  she  [Comfort  Wilkins] 
by  her  Good  Nature,  Gravity  and  strict  Vertue, 
convinces  all  that  'tis  not  her  Necessity  but 
her  Choice  that  keeps  her  a  Virgin.  .  .  .  She 
never  disguises  her  self  by  the  Gayetys  of  a 
Youthful  Dress,  and  talks  as  little  as  she  thinks 
of  Love:  She  goes  to  no  Balls  or  Dancing 
Match,  as  they  do  who  go  (to  such  Fairs)  in 
order  to  meet  with  Chapmen.  .  .  .  Her  looks, 
her  Speech,  her  whole  behaviour  are  so  very 
chaste,  that  but  once  going  to  kiss  her  I  thought 
she  had  blush 'd  to  death." 

Widows  made  no  difficulties  about  being 
kissed  (see  Judge  Sewall  on  this  point)  and  they 
were  often  willing  to  marry  almost  any  decent 
man  who  paid  court  to  them.  Sometimes  their 
courtship  period  was  shockingly  brief,  as  in  the 
case  of  Honorable  Charles  Phelps  of  Vermont 


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210  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

and  a  widow  whom  he  made  his  wife  after 
an  acquaintance  of  but  a  single  day!  Mr. 
Phelps  is  characterized  in  the  notice  of  his 
wedding  as  "  a  gentleman  of  uncommon  polite- 
ness"; he  appears  to  have  been  uncommonly 
impetuous  as  well.  He  was  sixty  at  the  time 
of  his  second  wooing,  had  been  bereft  of  his 
first  wife  only  a  few  months,  and  had  met  the 
lady  he  so  swiftly  led  to  the  altar  while  paying 
court  to  her  aunt.  The  older  woman,  after  de- 
clining her  suitor's  proposal  of  marriage,  ac- 
commodatingly informed  him  that  she  had 
visiting  her  just  then  a  niece,  another  widow, 
to  whom  an  offer  of  this  kind  might  be  more 
agreeable.  She  thereupon  led  in  and  intro- 
duced Mrs.  Anstis  Eustis  Kneeland,  aged 
thirty. 

"  The  young  lady,  all  covered  with  blushes, 
and  trembling  with  apprehension,  received," 
we  read,1  "  the  salutation  of  an  old  gentleman, 
large  and  corpulent,  six  feet  three  inches  in  the 
clear,  in  full  bottom  wig,  frizzed  and  powdered 
in  the  most  approved  style,  either  for  the  ju- 
dicial bench  or  ladies'  drawing-room.  The 
announcement  of  the  question  immediately 
followed.  The  lady  turned  pale.  Her  deli- 
cacy was  shocked.  With  overpowered  sensa- 
tions she  begged  to  withdraw  a  moment.  Her 
aunt  also  gently  obtained  leave  of  absence  and 

1  Id  "  Under  a  Colonial  Roof-Tree,"  by  Arris  S.  Huntington. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  211 

followed.  But  after  a  short  consideration  the 
ladies  both  returned. 

"  '  Judge  Phelps  \  remarked  the  elder  lady, 
'  we  are  taken  by  surprise.  The  subject  is  deeply 
important.  My  niece,  although  favorably  im- 
pressed, asks  time  to  consider.  She  presumes 
upon  your  delicacy,  and  is  assured  that,  if  it 
at  all  corresponds  with  your  gallantry,  you 
will  indulge  her  a  short  space  for  reflection, 
say  one  week,  after  which,  if  you  will  honor 
us  with  a  call,  my  niece  —  we,  I  mean  —  will 
be  better  prepared.' 

"  '  Preparation !  Dearest  madam,  do  me  the 
favor  to  commit  all  preparation  to  my  care.  I 
am  so  happy  in  this  respect  that  I  have  already 
hinted  to  a  dear  friend  of  mine,  a  Presbyterian 
minister  —  * " 

To  allow  her  niece  to  be  married  by  a  Pres- 
byterian was,  however,  so  much  more  shocking 
to  the  match-maker  than  to  allow  her  to  be 
married  immediately,  that  the  lesser  point  was 
at  once  lost  sight  of  —  with  the  result  that  this 
daughter  of  the  ancient  and  honorable  family 
of  Eustis  in  Boston  was  made  Mrs.  Phelps  the 
very  next  day  by  a  parson  of  her  own  choosing. 

An  even  more  hasty  alliance  was  that  of  Gov- 
ernor Richard  Bellingham  to  Penelope  Pelham, 
who  has  come  down  to  us  as  a  most  upright  and 
virtuous  woman,  even  though  her  marriage  did 
cause  great  scandal  in  the  Boston  of  her  day. 


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212  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  The  young  gentlewoman,"  we  read, "  was  ready 
to  be  contracted  to  a  friend  of  his  (Governor 
Bellingham),  who  lodged  in  his  house  and  by 
his  consent  had  proceeded  so  far  with  her,  when 
on  a  sudden  the  governor  treated  with  her 
and  obtained  her  for  himself.  He  excused  it 
by  the  strength  of  his  affection  and  that  she 
was  not  absolutely  promised  to  the  other  gen- 
tleman. Two  errors  more  he  committed  upon  it. 
1.  That  he  would  not  have  his  contract  pub- 
lished where  he  dwelt,  contrary  to  an  order  of 
court.  2.  That  he  married  himself  contrary 
to  the  constant  practice  of  the  country.  The 
great  inquest  presented  him  for  breach  of  order 
of  court,  and  at  the  court  following,  on  the  4th 
month,  the  secretary  called  him  to  answer  the 
prosecution.  But  he  not  going  off  the  bench, 
as  the  manner  was,  and  but  few  of  the  magis- 
trates present,  he  put  it  off  to  another  time, 
intending  to  speak  with  him  privately  and  with 
the  rest  of  the  magistrates  about  the  case,  and 
accordingly  he  told  him  the  reason  why  he  did 
not  proceed,  viz.,  being  not  willing  to  command 
him  publicly  to  go  off  the  bench,  and  yet  not 
thinking  it  fit  he  should  sit  as  a  judge  when  he 
was  by  law  to  answer  as  an  offender.  This  he 
took  ill  and  said  he  would  not  go  off  the  bench 
except  he  were  commanded." 

Bellingham  was  fifty  at  the  time  of  this  mar- 
riage, and  the  lady  who  precipitously  became 


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OLD- NEW    ENGLAND  213 

his  wife  twenty.  A  similarly  arresting  disparity 
in  ages  is  to  be  found  in  the  case  of  Governor  ■ 
Benning  Wentworth  and  Martha  Hilton,  the 
maid-servant  who  became  his  wife.  On  this 
occasion,  however,  a  clergyman  of  the  Church 
of  England  officiated,  that  Reverend  Arthur 
Browne  of  whom  both  Copley  and  Longfellow 
have  left  us  pleasing  pictures. 

The  first  girl  married  in  Boston  by  a  minister 
of  the  gospel  *  was  Rebecca  Rawson,  whose 
story  is  as  romantic  —  and  as  sad  —  as  any  in 
the  annals  of  New  England.  The  daughter  of 
Edward  Rawson,  third  secretary  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Colony,  —  who  was  himself  a  descend- 
ant of  Sir  Edward  Rawson,  Dorset,  England,  — 
Rebecca  naturally  thought  herself  quite  fit  to 
be  the  wife  of  a  man  who  came  courting  her 
and  who  declared  himself  to  be  Sir  Thomas 
Hale,  Jr.,  nephew  of  Lord  Chief  Justice  Hale. 
They  were  married  July  1,  1679,  "  in  the  pres- 
ence of  near  forty  witnesses,  and  being  hand- 
somely furnished,  sailed  for  England  and  safely 
arrived. 

"  She  went  on  shore  in  a  dishabille,"  says 
the  curious  old  document  which  preserves  this 
moving  tale,  "  leaving  her  trunks  on  board  the 
vessel,  and  went  to  lodge  with  a  relation  of  hers. 
In  the  morning  early  he  [her  husband]  arose, 


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214  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

took  the  keys,  and  told  her  he  would  send  her 
trunks  on  shore  that  she  might  be  dressed  be- 
fore dinner.  He  sent  the  trunks  up,  and  she 
waited  impatiently  for  the  keys  till  one  or  two 
o'clock;  but  he  not  coming,  she  broke  open 
the  trunks,  and  to  her  inexpressible  surprise 
she  found  herself  stript  of  everything,  and  her 
trunks  filled  with  combustible  matter;  on 
which  her  kinsman  ordered  his  carriage,  and 
they  went  to  a  place  where  she  stopt  with  her 
husband  the  night  before.  She  enquired  for 
Sir  Thomas  Hale,  Jr. ;  they  said  he  had  not  been 
there  for  some  days.  She  said  she  was  sure  he 
was  there  the  night  before.  They  said  Thomas 
Rumsey  had  been  there  with  a  young  Lady, 
but  was  gone  to  his  wife  in  Canterbury;  and 
she  saw  him  no  more."  ' 

Thus  abandoned,  Rebecca  set  herself  to  dis- 
cover some  means  of  income,  finally  supporting 
herself  and  the  child  which  soon  came,  by  "  paint- 
ing on  glass."  So  she  struggled  on  for  thirteen 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  time  she  determined 
to  return  to  New  England.  Her  child  she  left 
in  the  care  of  her  sister  in  England,  who  had 
no  children  of  her  own,  and  embarked  for  Boston 
by  way  of  Jamaica  in  a  vessel  which  belonged 
to  one  of  her  uncles.  The  ship,  with  its  pas- 
sengers and  crew,   was  swallowed  up  June  9, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  215 

1692,  in  the  great  Fort  Royal  earthquake. 
Whittier  tells  Rebecca's  story  in  considerable 
detail  in  his  entertaining  little  piece  of  imagina- 
tive writing,  "  Leaves  from  Margaret  Smith's 
Journal  in  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay." 
One  English  marriage  custom,  which  the 
Puritans,  to  their  honor,  steadfastly  refused  to 
introduce  into  the  New  World,  was  that  by 
which  children  were  married  off,  while  still 
of  tender  age,  for  the  sake  of  assuring  to  the 
families  concerned  a  fortune  that  might  be 
contingent.  From  a  careful  study  made  of  the 
old  court  records  in  the  town  of  Chester,  Eng- 
land, it  has  been  brought  out  that  child-mar- 
riages, troth-plights,  and  the  like,  were  ex- 
ceedingly common  in  the  old  country  during 
the  seventeenth  century.  Mary  Hewitt  of 
Danton  Basset  was  wedded  in  1669,  when  three 
years  old.  John  Evelyn,  in  1672,  was  present 
"  at  the  marriage  of  Lord  Arlington's  only  daugh- 
ter, a  sweet  child  if  there  ever  was  any,  aged 
five,  to  the  Duke  of  Grafton."  The  story  is 
told  of  one  little  bridegroom  of  three  who  was 
held  up  in  the  arms  of  an  English  clergyman 
and  coaxed  to  repeat  the  words  of  the  service. 
Before  it  was  finished,  the  child  said  that  he 
would  learn  no  more  of  his  lesson  that  day, 
but  the  parson  answered:  "You  just  speak  a 
little  more  and  then  go  play  yon."  But  when 
Governor  Endicott  was  approached  to  marry 


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216  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

off,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  little  Rebecca  Cooper, 
who  had  been  left  an  orphan  in  Salem,  and 
whom  Governor  Winthrop's  sister,'  Madam 
Downing,  desired  for  a  daughter-in-law  be- 
cause, as  she  said  frankly,  "  the  disposition 
of  the  mayde  and  her  education  with  Mrs. 
Endicott  are  hopefull,  her  person  tollerable, 
and  the  estate  very  convenient ",  he,  as  guard- 
ian of  the  child,  firmly  rejected  the  proposal: 
"  for  these  grounds,  first:  The  girle  desires 
not  to  marry  as  yet.  Sndlee:  Shee  confesseth 
(which  is  the  truth)  herselfe  to  be  altogether 
yett  unfitt  for  such  a  condition,  shee  beinge 
a  verie  girl  and  but  15  yeares  of  age.  3rdlie: 
Where  the  man  was  moved  to  her  shee  said 
shee  could  not  like  him.  4thlie:  You  know 
it  would  be  of  ill  reporte  that  a  girl  because 
shee  hath  some  estate  should  bee  disposed  of 
soe  young,  espetialie  not  having  any  parents 
to  choose  for  her.  fifthlie:  I  have  some  good 
hopes  of  the  child's  coming  on  to  the  best 
thinges." 

Governor  Winthrop,  to  whom  this  letter  was 
addressed,  accepted  the  decision  without  more 
ado,  and  the  match  did  not  come  off.  But  he 
was  probably  none  the  less  convinced  that  a 
girl  of  fifteen  was  quite  old  enough  to  marry; 
he  himself  had  been  only  seventeen  when  he 
first  took  upon  himself  the  duties  and  respon- 
sibilities  of  a  husband.     But   Winthrop   was 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  217 

quite  an  extraordinary  lover  for  his  time,  as 
some  of  his  letters  clearly  show. 

He  had  inherited  from  his  mother  a  nature 
of  very  unusual  affectionateness,  and  he  was 
much  franker  than  most  of  his  contemporaries 
in  the  expression  of  his  impulses  and  emotions. 
Once  when  he  was  trying,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife, 
to  be  very  resigned  and  spiritual-minded,  he 
interrupts  himself  to  exclaim  to  her:  *'  The 
Love  of  this  present  World !  how  it  bewitches  us 
&  steales  away  our  hearts  from  him  who  is  the 
onely  Kfe  &  felicitye.  O  that  we  could  delight 
in  Christ  our  Lord  &  heavenly  husband  as  we 
doe  in  each  other  &  that  his  absence  were  like 
grievous  to  us ! "  On  the  eve  of  his  departure  to 
America,  he  writes:  "MY  SWEET  WIFE, 
The  Lord  hath  oft  brought  us  together  with 
comfort  when  we  have  been  long  absent;  and 
if  it  be  good  for  us  he  will  do  so  still.  When  I 
was  in  Ireland  he  brought  us  together  again. 
When  I  was  sick  here  in  London  he  restored  us 
together  again.  How  many  dangers,  near 
death,  hast  thou  been  in  thyself!  and  yet  the 
Lord  hath  granted  me  to  enjoy  thee  still.  If 
he  did  not  watch  over  us  we  need  not  go  over 
sea  to  seek  death  or  misery:  we  should  meet  it 
at  every  step,  in  every  journey.  And  is  not  he 
a  God  abroad  as  well  as  at  home?  Is  not  his 
power  and  providence  the  same  in  New  Eng- 
land as  it  hath  been  in  Old  England?    My  good 


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218  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

wife,  trust  in  the  Lord,  whom  thou  hast  found 
faithful.  He  will  be  better  to  thee  than  any 
husband  and  will  restore  thy  husband  with  ad- 
vantage. But  I  kiss  my  sweet  wife  and  bless 
thee  and  all  ours  and  rest  Thine  ever  JO.  WIN- 
THROP 

"February  14,  1629 — Thou  must  be  my 
valentine.  ..." 

One  more  significant  extract  from  Winthrop's 
letters  just  before  sailing.  From  his  ship,  de- 
tained near  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the  great  man 
wrote:  "  Mondays  and  Fridays,  at  five  of  the 
clock  at  night,  we  shall  meet  in  spirit  till  we 
meet  in  person." 

Winthrop  appears  to  have  been  emulating 
here  the  tryst  between  Imogen  and  Posthumus. 
For  Imogen,  it  will  be  remembered,  complains 
that  she  and  her  lover  had  been  torn  apart 

"  Ere  I  could  tell  him, 
How  I  would  think  on  him  at  certain  hours 
Such  thoughts,  and  such; 

...  or  have  charg'd  him, 
At  the  sixth  hour  of  morn,  at  noon,  at  midnight, 
To  encounter  me  with  orisons,  for  then, 
I  am  in  heaven  for  him." 

This  Puritan  Posthumus  was,  however,  tn 
his  forty-third  year,  while  his  Imogen  was 
thirty-nine  and  had  borne  him  several  chil- 
dren. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  219 

By  1759  men  in  search  of  wives  were  adopt- 
ing the  "  matrimonial  advertisement  "  to  help 
them  in  their  quest.  Thus,  in  the  Boston  Eve- 
ning Post  of  February  28  in  that  year,  may  be 
found  the  following  naive  notice: 

"  To  the  Ladies.  Any  young  Lady  between 
the  Age  of  Eighteen  and  twenty  three  of  a 
Midling  Stature;  brown  Hair,  regular  Features 
and  a  Lively  Brisk  Eye:  Of  Good  Morals  & 
not  Tinctured  with  anything  that  may  Sully 
so  Distinguishable  a  Form  posessed  of  3  or 
400£  entirely  at  her  own  Disposal  and  where 
there  will  be  no  necessity  of  going  Through  the 
tiresome  Talk  of  addressing  Parents  or  Guard- 
ians for  their  consent:  Such  a  one,  by  leaving  a 
Line  directed  for  A.  W.  at  the  British  Coffee 
House  in  King  Street  appointing  where  an 
Interview  may  be  had  will  meet  with  a  Person 
who  flatters  himself  he  shall  not  be  thought 
Disagreeable  by  any  Lady  answering  the  above 
description.  N.  B.  Profound  Secrecy  will  be 
observ'd.  No  Trifling  Answers  will  be  re- 
garded." 

Evidently  this  advertiser  had  ante-nuptial 
debts  of  which  he  wished  to  be  free.  Debts 
which  a  woman  brought  with  her  from  a  pre- 
vious alliance  were  sloughed  off,  in  old  New 
England,  by  the  very  curious  custom  known  as 
smock-marriages,  or  shift-marriages.  It  was 
thought  that  if  a  bride  were  married  "  in  her 


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220  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

shift  on  the  king's  highway  ",  no  creditor  could 
pursue  her  further,  and  accordingly  many  a 
woman  was  so  married  to  a  second  husband. 
Usually,  for  modesty's  sake,  this  ceremony 
took  place  in  the  evening.  Later  the  bride  was 
permitted  on  these  trying  occasions  to  take 
her  stand  in  a  closet. 

One  of  these  closet  marriages  —  that  of  Major 
Moses  Joy  to  Widow  Hannah  Ward,  which  oc- 
curred in  Newfane,  Vermont,  in  February,  1789 
—  is  graphically  described  by  W.  C.  Prime  in 
his  entertaining  book,  "  Along  New  England 
Roads."  The  bride  in  this  instance  stood, 
with  no  clothing  on,  within  a  closet  and  held  out 
her  hand  to  the  major  through  a  diamond- 
shaped  hole  in  the  door.  When  the  two  had 
been  pronounced  man  and  wife,  she  came  forth 
from  the  closet,  gorgeously  attired  in  wedding 
garments,  which  had  been  thoughtfully  placed 
there  for  her  use.  The  story  of  a  marriage  in 
which  the  bride,  entirely  unclad,  left  her  room 
by  a  window  at  night  and  donned  her  wedding 
garments  standing  on  the  top  round  of  a  high 
ladder  is  also  related  by  Mr.  Prime.  Hall's 
"  History  of  Eastern  Vermont  "  tells  of  a  mar- 
riage in  Westminster  of  that  State  in  which 
the  Widow  Lovejoy,  while  nude  and  hidden  in  a 
chimney  recess  behind  a  curtain,  took  one  Asa 
Averill  to  be  her  spouse.  Smock-marriages  on 
the  public  highway  were  occurring  in  York, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  221 

Maine,  as  late  as  1774,  if  we  may  trust  the  "  His- 
tory of  Wells  and  Kennebunkport "  ;  Widow 
Maiy  Bradley,  who,  clad  only  in  her  shift,  un- 
derwent this  ordeal  on  a  bitter  February  day, 
excited  such  pity  in  the  officiating  minister  that 
he  threw  his  coat  over  her.  A  curious  variation 
of  this  smock-marriage  custom  is  recorded  in 
the  "  Life  of  Gustavus  Vasa  ",  the  case  being 
that  of  a  man  who  had  been  condemned  to 
death  on  the  gallows  but  was  liberated  because 
a  woman,  clad  only  in  her  shift,  came  forward 
and  married  him  just  as  he  was  about  to  undergo 
execution. 

As  soon  as  a  young  man  had  won  from  the 
girl  of  his  choice  her  promise  to  be  his  wife,  he 
set  himself  to  the  task  of  building  "  a  nest  for 
his  bird."  Second  only  to  the  wedding  itself 
in  hilarity  was  the  "  raising  ",  in  which  all  of 
his  neighbors  and  friends  assisted,  and  bf  which 
games  and  feasting  played  an  important  part. 
A  very  old  custom  was  for  the  bride  elect  to 
drive  one  of  the  pins  in  the  frame  of  her  future 
home.  Thus,  in  a  peculiar  sense,  the  house  was 
hers  as  well  as  her  husband's.  It  is  related  of  a 
Windsor,  Connecticut,  bride  that  though  she 
broke  her  engagement  because  her  affianced 
partook  of  more  liquor  than  he  could  well  man- 
age on  the  day  of  their  "  raising  ",  she  made  all 
quite  right  by  marrying  a  young  man  of  the 
same  name  who  purchased  from  her  former 


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222  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

lover  the  house  in  which  she  had  driven  a 
pin. 

Another  curious  old  custom  connected  with 
getting  married  was  that  of  "  stealing  the 
bride."  Those  of  a  couple's  acquaintance  who 
were  not  invited  to  the  wedding  would  some- 
times combine,  go  stealthily  to  the  house  where 
the  ceremony  was  being  performed,  and  watch- 
ing for  a  favorable  opportunity,  would  rush  in, 
seize  the  bride,  carry  her  out,  place  her  on  a 
horse  behind  one  of  the  party,  and  race  off  with 
her  to  a  neighboring  tavern,  where  music,  sup- 
per, and  so  on,  had  previously  been  bespoken. 
If  the  capture  and  flight  were  successful,  and  the 
captors  succeeded  in  reaching  their  rendezvous 
at  the  tavern  without  being  overtaken  by  the 
wedding  party,  the  night  was  spent  in  dancing 
and  feasting  at  the  expense  of  the  bridegroom. 

Not  infrequently  a  man  suffered  grievously 
in  the  attempt  to  comply  with  the  sartorial 
demands  of  the  girl  he  desired  to  win.  A  fairly 
correct  idea  of  the  fashions  of  the  time  and  of 
what  the  woman  with  standards  of  style  de- 
manded in  the  opposite  sex  may  be  gleaned 
from  the  following  contribution  to  the  New 
'  York  Mercury,  under  date  of  January  31,  1757. 
The  writer,  who  appears  to  have  courted  in 
vain  the  lady  of  his  heart's  desire,  writes  as 
follows: 

"  I  am  a  bachelor  turned  of  thirty,  in  easy 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  223 

circumstances,  and  want  nothing  but  a  wife  to 
make  me  as  happy  as  my  neighbours. 

"  I  have  long  admired  a  young  lady,  who,  I 
can  with  great  propriety,  call  Miss  Modish; 
though  for  her  unreasonable  conduct  to  me  she 
deserves  to  have  her  real  name  exposed  in  capi- 
tals. She  has  a  mind  capable  of  every  improve- 
ment and  graces  of  her  sex;  and  were  it  not  for 
an  excessive  fondness  for  gaity  and  the  reign- 
ing amusements  of  the  town,  would  be  unex- 
ceptionably  lovely. 

"  To  this  fair  one  I  have  most  obsequiously 
paid  my  addresses  for  these  last  four  years; 
and  had  I  been  a  Beau,  or  she  less  a  Belle,  I 
should  undoubtedly  long  since  have  succeeded; 
for  fashions,  cards  and  assemblies  were  the 
only  things  in  which  we  did  not  perfectly  agree. 
But  whenever  these  were  the  subjects  of  con- 
versation we  were  as  certainly  ruffled  and  out 
of  temper.  On  these  occasions  she  would  tell 
me,  '  she  was  astonished  I  would  dispute  with 
her  when  every  genteel  person  was  of  her  opinion. 
That  one  might  be  as  well  out  of  Ike  world  as  out  of 
the  mode.  For  her  part,  she  would  never  think 
of  marrying  a  man  who  was  so  obstinately  awk- 
ward and  impolite,  let  his  other  accomplish- 
ments be  ever  so  refined.  I  dressed  like  a  clown 
and  hardly  ever  waited  on  her  to  a  public  di- 
version; and  indeed  when  I  did  she  was  in  pain 
for  me,  I  behaved  so  queer.    She  had  no  notion 


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224  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

at  her  age,  of  sacrificing  all  the  dear  pleasures 
of  routs,  hops  and  quadrille  for  a  philosophical 
husband.  No,  if  I  expected  to  make  myself 
agreeable  to  her  I  must  learn''  to  dress  gallant 
and  be  smart.'  Now,  truth  is,  I  can't  dance 
and  have  an  unconquerable  aversion  to  fop- 
pery. In  order  to  form  me  to  her  taste,  Miss 
Modish  has  always  most  obstinately  insisted 
on  my  complying  with  every  idle  fashion  that 
has  been  introduced  since  my  acquaintance 
with  her,  under  the  severe  penalty  of  never 
hoping  for  her  love  if  I  did  not  implicitly  obey. 
This,  with  infinite  reluctance  and  mortification, 
I  have  been  under  the  hard  necessity  of  doing. 
I  remember,  when  high  brimmed  hats  were  in 
the  mode,  she  insisted  on  an  elevation  of  my 
beaver  of  near  half  an  inch  with  a  fierce  Cave 
Null  cock.  The  taste  changed,  and  she  would 
hardly  allow  me  enough  to  protect  my  phiz 
from  the  inclemency  of  the  weather.  My  coat, 
when  coatees  flourished,  was  reduced  to  the 
size  of  a  dwarf's,  and  then  again  increased  to 
the  longitude  of  a  surtout.  The  cuffs  in  the 
winter  were  made  open,  for  the  benefit  of  taking 
in  the  cool  north  weather;  in  the  summer  again 
they  were  close  to  prevent  the  advantage  of 
the  refreshing  breeze.  In  the  summer  I  was 
smothered  with  a  double  cravat:  in  the  winter, 
relieved  again  with  a  single  cambric  neckcloth. 
It  would  be  tedious  to  repeat  the  many  sur- 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  225 

prising  and  ridiculous  changes  I  underwent  in 
the  outward  man;  let  it  suffice  to  observe  that 
my  wig,  ruffles,  shoes  and  every  little  particular, 
not  excepting  my  breeches,  have  shared  the 
same  unaccountable  metamorphosis,  all  which 
grievous  foppery,  my  excessive  fondness  for  her 
made  me  suffer  with  Christian  resignation; 
but  at  last  she  has  fairly  exhausted  my  patience, 
and  we  have  now  come  to  an  open  rupture,  the 
occasion  of  which  was  this:  We  happily  fell 
into  the  old  topic  of  my  want  of  taste  and  breed- 
ing. '  You  will  always,'  says  she,  '  be  an  old- 
fashioned  creature'  (I  had  unluckily  called  her 
My  dear.)  '  Lord,  can't  you  take  pattern  after 
Mr.  Foppington?  How  happy  must  a  lady  be 
in  such  an  admirer!  He's  always  easy  and  good- 
humoured,  and  pays  the  finest  compliments  of 
any  gentleman  in  the  universe!  How  elegantly 
he  dresses!  And  then  he  sings  like  an  angel  and 
dances  to  perfection;  and  as  for  his  hair,  I 
never  saw  anything  so  exquisitely  fine.  Surely 
the  hair  is  the  most  valuable  part  of  a  man.' 

"  From  this  teasing  introduction  she  took 
occasion  to  insist  on  my  wearing  my  hair;  ob- 
serving that  I  could  not  refuse  it  since  I  saw 
how  pleasing  it  would  be  to  her.  I  used  all  the 
arguments  I  could  to  divert  her  from  this  unrea- 
sonable request;  but  she  peremptorily  declared 
she  would  never  speak  to  me  again  if  I  denied 
her  so  small  a  favor;    it  was  an  insult  on  the 


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226  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

prerogative  of  her  sex  and  a  convincing  proof 
that  I  neither  loved  her  nor  merited  her  esteem. 
I  remonstrated,  in  vain,  that  even  if  I  inclined 
to  play  the  fool,  and  put  my  head,  which,  as  it 
happened,  I  could  not  well  spare,  into  the  hand 
of  Monsieur  Piermont,  I  was  well  assured  that 
all  the  skill  and  industry  of  that  artist  would 
never  change  it  from  its  native  red,  or  form  a 
single  curl,  for  that  ever  since  I  was  six  years 
old,  it  had  been  condemned  to  be  close  shorn, 
as  incapable  of  affording  a  creditable  covering 
to  my  pericranium.  In  a  passion  she  desired 
never  to  see  me  more:  she  would  not  put  up 
with  such  contradictions  in  any  gentleman  who 
pretended  to  be  her  admirer." 

Yet  it  is  altogether  probable  that  he  began 
at  once  to  let  his  hair  grow  and  was  soon 
using  curl-papers  at  night  and  the  curling- 
tongs  by  day  in  an  endeavor  to  achieve  an 
effect  of  which  his  mistress  would  approve. 

That  quite  as  much  trouble  sometimes  en- 
sued when  the  lady  suddenly  required  that  her 
lover  wear  a  periwig  as  when,  as  in  this  case, 
she  asked  that  he  should  cease  to  wear  one,  we 
learn  from  the  Diary  of  Samuel  Sewall,  who, 
in  his  old  age,  was  almost  forced  to  take  to 
periwigs  —  which  he  abominated  —  in  his  efforts 
to  win  the  widow  of  his  choice. 

Dying  for  love,  or  living  a  life  of  seclusion 
because  of  a  broken  heart,  was  a  source  of  pride 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  227 

in  old  New  England,  even  among  men.  A 
certain  Doctor  Jones  of  Hollis,  New  Hampshire, 
reputed  to  have  been  a  native  of  England  and 
the  son  of  a  wealthy  British  military  officer, 
withdrew  to  a  lonely  cabin  because  he  could 
not  marry  the  girl  of  his  choice  and  never  ven- 
tured forth  save  when  clad  in  a  long,  plaid 
dressing-gown  and  wearing  a  hat  with  a  mourn- 
ing weed.  The  record  that  Jones  caused  to  be 
placed  on  his  tombstone  is 

MEMENTO  MORI 

ERECTED 

IN  MEMORY 

OF  DOCTOR 

JOHN  JONES 

Who   departed    this    life   July    4th,    1796,    in  the 
65  year  of  his  age. 

In  youth  he  was  a  scholar  bright, 
In  learning  he  took  great  delight, 
He  was  a  Major's  only  son, 
It  was  for  love  he  was  undone. 

A  similarly  sad  tale  is  suggested  by  the  elab- 
orately scrolled  gravestone  in  the  lower  ceme- 
tery of  Hopkinton,  New  Hampshire.  The  in- 
scription on  this  stone,  which  no  visitor  to  this 
quaint  and  picturesque  old  village  ever  fails  to 
search  out,  is  as  follows: 


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228  SOCIAL    LIFE.  IN 

In  testimony  of  sincere  affection, 
This  humble  monument  was  erected  by 
E.  DARLING, 
to  inform  the  passing  stranger  that  beneath  rests 
the  head  of  his  beloved 
ELIZA  W.  PARKER, 
youngest  daughter  of  Lt.  E.  P.,  who  died  of  con- 
sumption May  11,  1820 
JEt.  18. 

Invidious  Death!    How  dost  thou  rend  asunder 
The  bonds  of  nature  and  the  ties  of  love. 
In  Coelo  optamus  convenire. 
We  know  that  her  Redeemer  livetb. 

On  the  left  of  this  inscription,  as  the  reader 
faces  the  stone,  is  the  perpendicularly  chiseled 
sentiment: 

"  Her  eulogy  is  written  on  the  hearts  of  her  friends  "  ; 

on  the  right,  another  line: 

"Her  friends  were  —  ALL  who  knew  her." 

The  Baptist  burial-ground  in  East  Green- 
wich, Rhode  Island,  contains  a  stone  behind 
which  lies  still  another  story  of  a  broken  heart. 
It  reads: 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  229 

In  Memory  of 

JACOB  CAMPBELL 

Son  of  Archibald  Campbell 

Attorney  At  Law. 

Who  Departed  This  Life  March  5th,  1788,  in  the 

28th  Year  of  his  Age. 

"  Oh  faithful  Memory  may  thy  lamp  illume 
The  sacred  sepulchre  with  radiance  clear, 
Soft  plighted  lore  shall  rest  upon  his  tomb, 
And  friendship  o'er  it  shed  the  fragrant  tear." 

This  stone  was  erected  by  Eliza  Russell,  who 
became  attached  to  young  Campbell  during 
his  undergraduate  days  in  Rhode  Island  Col- 
lege (Brown  University),  from  which  he  was 
graduated  in  1783.  They  had  never  married 
because  he  was  consumptively  inclined;  but 
Eliza  nursed  her  lover  until  death  came  to  his 
relief,  and  after  that  retired  to  a  darkened 
room  where  she  stayed  for  the  rest  of  her  life. 
Only  those  who  could  talk  about  him  were 
admitted  to  her  presence,  and  the  sickness, 
suffering,  and  death  of  Campbell  were  the  only 
topics  on  which  she  would  speak.1 

Then,  as  now,  however,  marriages  which 
really  came  off  were  much  more  common  than 
those  whose  consummation  was  thus  tragically 
prevented.    The  diaries  of  the  day  are  full  of 

1  Updike's  "  Memoirs  of  the  Rhode  Island  Bar." 


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230  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

allusions  to  nuptial  celebrations,  though  they 
frequently  fail  to  go  into  such  details  as  we 
would  be  glad  to  see.  That  genial  society  man, 
John  Rowe,  notes  in  his  diary,  under  date  of 
November  8,  1764:  "Mr.  Thos.  Amory  mar- 
ried Miss  Betty  Coffin  this  evening;  there  was 
a  great  company  at  old  Mr.  Coffin's  on  the  occa- 
sion, and  a  great  dance."  January  13,  1767, 
he  records  "  a  wedding  frolick  "  at  John  Er- 
ving,  Jr.'s,  where  he  "  had  the  pleasure  to  dance 
with  the  bride."  His  longest  account  of  a  wed- 
ding is  that  of  February  2,  1768.  It  is  as  fol- 
lows: 

"  This  morning  Miss  Polly  Hooper  was  mar- 
ried in  Trinity  Church  to  Mr.  John  Russell 
Spence  by  the  Revd.  Mr.  Walter.  A  great 
concourse  of  People  attended  on  the  Occasion. 
Dined  at  Mrs.  Hooper's  with  her,  the  new 
Bridegroom  &  Bride,  Mr.  Thos.  Apthorp,  Mr. 
Robt.  Hallowell,  Miss  Nancy  Boutineau,  Miss 
Dolly  Murray,  Mrs.  Murray,  Bridemen  & 
Bridemaids,  Mr.  Murray,  Mrs.  Murray,  Mr. 
Stephen  Greenleaf,  Mrs.  Greenleaf,  the  Revd. 
Mr.  Walter,  Major  Bayard,  Mrs.  Bayard,  Mrs. 
Rowe,  Mr.  Thos.  Hooper,  Mr.  John  Hooper, 
Mrs.  Eustis,  Nath.  Apthorp.  In  the  afternoon 
wee  were  joyned  by  Mr.  Inman,  Miss  Suky, 
John  Apthorp  Esq.  &  lady,  Dr.  Bulfinch  &  lady, 
Mr.  Amiel,  Mr.  John  Erving  &  lady.  Wee  all 
drank   Tea,    spent   the  evening  there,  had  a 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  231 

Dance,  wee  were  merry  &  spent  the  whole  day 
very  clever  &  agreeable."  1 

It  would  have  been  pleasant  to  know  what 
the  bride  wore  on  this  occasion,  of  what  the 
collation  8  consisted,  and  what  presents  were  re- 
ceived from  the  distinguished  guests.  "  A  white 
satin  night  gound  "  is  the  somewhat  startling 
costume  attributed  by  Anna  Green  Winslow 
to  a  blue-blooded  Boston  bride  of  1773.  But 
a  nightgown  was  not  in  those  days  a  garment 
to  wear  when  sleeping;  that  was  called  a  rail. 
The  woman's  nightgown  was  a  loose,  flowing 
garment  resembling  the  "  tea-gown "  of  the 
late  Victorian  era;  the  nightgown  of  men  was 
like  the  dressing-gown  of  our  own  day, 

Though  we  have  no  picture  of  Polly  Hooper's 
wedding  party,  we  have  one,  herewith  repro- 
duced, of  another  Boston  wedding  celebrated 
about  this  same  time.  One  interesting  item 
here  to  be  noted  is  the  pocket  hoops  worn  by 
the  women.  No  fashion  that  has  come  down  to 
us  is  more  ugly  than  this  of  pannier-shaped 
humps  on  each  side  of  the  hips.  They  were 
very  greatly  the  vogue  in  1750,  however,  and 
again  in  1780.  One  portrait  of  Juliana  Penn, 
daughter-in-law  of  William  Penn,  shows  her  in 

1 "  Letters  and  Diary  of  John  Rowe."  W.  B.  Clarke  Company, 

3  John  Andrews  mentions  "  cold  ham,  cold  roast  beef,  cake, 
cheese,  etc.,"  as  a  "  very  pretty  "  wedding  collation  for  other  nup- 
tials oi  about  tfail  time. 


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232  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

pocket  Loops  which  stand  out  a  foot  and  a  half 
horizontally  from  the  waist!  Only  mildly  de- 
forming in  comparison  with  this  extreme  were 
the  hoops  which  first  came  into  fashion  with 
the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
which,  though  regarded  as  trenching  on  mo- 
rality, were  quickly  tolerated  even  by  the  most 
impeccable  of  Puritans.  When  William  Pep- 
perell,  in  1723,  took  to  wife  Judge  Sewall's 
granddaughter,  Mary  Hirst,  a  hooped  petti- 
coat was  among  the  gifts  made  by  the  groom 
to  the  bride.  Hoops,  in  spite  of  their  ugliness, 
seem  to  have  been  popular  with  eighteenth 
century  ladies  who  were  "  getting  married." 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  VI 

SETTING  UP  HOUSEKEEPING 

THERE  was  no  wedding-trip  in  the  early 
days,  the  newly  married  pair  proceeding 
at  once  to  the  business  of  setting  up 
housekeeping.  The  home  to  which  the  proud 
young  husband  conducted  his  strong-souled 
bride  was  at  first  a  rude  log  cabin  or  a  cellar 
dug  in  the  hillside.  But  these  temporary  habi- 
tations were  soon  followed  by  small  wooden 
houses  which,  though  crude  in  construction, 
met  sufficiently  well  the  actual  needs  of  the 
time. 

During  the  first  quarter-century  of  history 
in  the  New  World,  scarcely  any  enduring 
houses  were  built  in  the  country  districts;  only 
in  mercantile  centers  like  Boston,  Portsmouth, 
Providence,  and  Newport  did  people  erect 
houses  meant  to  be  permanent.  A  very  inter- 
esting fact  concerning  such  houses  has  lately 
been  established  by  Henry  B.  Worth :  of  New 
Bedford:  that  in  a  given  period  all  New  Eng- 
land communities  adopted  the  same  style  and 

1  Register  Lynn  Historical  Society,  Vol.  XIV. 


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234  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

shape  of  dwelling.  Thus  the  approximate  age 
of  any  surviving  old  house  can  readily  be  de- 
termined by  classifying  its  architectural  style 
and  finding  out  to  which  period  that  style  be- 
longs. 

Of  course,  in  the  more  remote  sections,  a 
particular  style  would  linger  for  many  years 
after  it  had  been  abandoned  in  the  larger  com- 
munities; Nantucket,  for  instance,  was  build- 
ing lean-to  dwellings  forty  years  after  the  Massa- 
chusetts Bay  people  had  advanced  beyond  this 
primitive  form  of  home.  And  occasionally  an 
enterprising  householder,  wishing  to  give  his 
bride  something  better  than  any  other  New 
England  bride  had  ever  had,  would  anticipate 
a  style  which  was  later  to  become  well-known. 
But,  for  the  most  part,  the  simple  rule  holds 
and  may  be  profitably  applied  by  those  poking 
about  among  old  houses  in  New  England,  — 
houses  which,  thus  tested,  are  frequently  found 
to  be  considerably  less  old  than  their  fond 
owners  have  believed. 

During  all  the  first  period  of  our  architectural 
history,  houses  had  only  one  room.  The  Potter 
house  in  Westport,  Massachusetts,  built  in 
1667,  was  a  one-story  dwelling  made  with  a 
stone  end  and  having  a  single  room  eighteen 
feet  square  with  a  loft  under  the  roof.  In 
Rhode  Island  this  was  the  prevailing  style  for 
a  generation  before  1660.    By  the  time  of  King 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  235 

Philip's  War,  however,  two-story  houses  had 
there  come  into  general  use,  the  upper  story 
being  devoted  to  sleeping-rooms,  while  on  the 
first  floor  was  a  single  room  which  served  as 
kitchen,  dining-room,  and  parlor. 

The  living  equipment  of  such  a  home  as  this 
may  be  gathered  from  the  inventory  of  John 
Smith,  a  Providence  miller,  who  died  late  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  John  had  a  wife 
and  ten  children,  and  he  left  a  landed  estate 
of  more  than  three  hundred  acres.  Yet  his 
house  consisted  of  two  rooms  —  a  "  lower 
fiooine "  and  a  "  Chamber."  In  the  latter 
apartment  the  only  pieces  of  furniture  were 
"  two  bed  studs  with  the  bed  and  bed  in g  to 
them  belonging."  In  the  room  below  were 
one  bedstead  and  its  furnishings,  four  chairs, 
"  a  chest  with  the  Book  of  Martirs  in  it,  and 
an  old  Bible  Some  lost  and  some  of  it  tome." 
Nor  were  the  kitchen  utensils  much  more  im- 
pressive: a  brass  kettle,  a  small  copper  kettle, 
"  an  old  broken  Copper  Kettle,  a  frying  pan, 
a  spitt,  and  a  small  Grater,  a  paile  and  a  Cann, 
and  S  Iron  Potts."  For  tableware  there  were 
"  two  Small  pewter  platters,  two  Basons  & 
three  porengers,  two  quart  Glasses,  severall 
wooden  dishes,  a  wooden  Bottle,  some  old 
trenchers  and  foure  old  Spoones."  Yet  this 
man's  estate  was  valued  at  ninety  pounds,  and 
he  owned,  besides,  live  stock  to  the  extent  of 


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236  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

one  steer,  two  heifers,  two  bulls,  five  horses 
and  "  16  swine  great  and  small  together." 
Colonel  Nicholas  Power,  also  of  Providence, 
who  died  about  half  a  century  later,  and  whose 
style  of  living  was  thought  to  be  sumptuous,  has 
come  down  to  us  in  history  by  reason  of  the 
fact  that  his  house  was  provided  with  a  "  dine- 
ing  room." 

Outside  of  Rhode  Island,  the  lean-to  was 
long  the  dominant  type  of  New  England  dwell- 
ing-house. Between  1675  and  1775,  however, 
that  is,  from  the  end  of  King  Philip's  War 
until  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution,  such 
houses  were  frequently  amplified  so  as  to  in- 
clude a  second  ground-floor  room,  which  was 
used  as  a  parlor.  After  the  Revolution,  the 
full  four-apartment  house  became  common,  a 
house,  that  is,  which  provided  a  room  for  each 
of  the  four  household  purposes  of  cooking, 
eating,  sleeping,  and  holding  social  intercourse. 
Any  house  thus  lavishly  planned  could  not 
have  been  built  before  the  Revolution,  ex- 
perts on  this  subject  declare,  unless  it  stands  in 
some  wealthy  center. 

By  the  very  nature  of  its  construction  —  its 
long  sloping  roof  giving  incomparable  protec- 
tion against  the  north  winds  of  winter  —  the 
lean-to  is  the  type  of  old  New  England  house 
of  which  most  examples  still  remain.  These 
houses  always  faced  south,  regardless  of  the  re- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  237 

lation  which  might  thus  be  established  to  the 
adjacent  road.  Before  1670,  having  one  room 
in  the  first  story,  they  had  the  chimney  at  the 
end.  When  an  additional  apartment  was  de- 
sired, the  house  was  simply  doubled,  thus  pro- 
ducing a  structure  with  the  chimney  in  the 
center. 

During  the  prosperous  period  which  pre- 
ceded the  French  and  Indian  Wars,  the  gam- 
brel-roofed  house  came  into  popular  favor. 
Many  houses  built  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  years  ago  in  this  style  are  still  in  existence, 
and  in  recent  years  the  design  has  been  enthu- 
siastically revived.  A  beautiful  example  of 
former  days  was  that  in  which  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  was  born,  and  which  stood,  until  1883, 
on  the  site  now  occupied  by  the  Law  School  of 
Harvard  University.  Holmes  once  spoke  of  his 
birthplace  as  "  stately  enough  for  college  dig- 
nitaries and  scholarly  clergymen  ",  but  not  by 
any  means  "  one  of  those  Tory  Episcopal- 
church-goer's  strongholds,  .  .  .  not  a  house  for 
his  Majesty's  Counsellors  or  the  Right  Rev- 
erend successor  of  Him  who  had  not  where  to 
lay  his  head."  By  which  he  meant  that  it  was 
not  in  the  Craigie  House,  or  Abthorp  House 
class. 

The  Dutch-cap  house,  having  sometimes  a 
central  chimney  and  in  other  cases  two  chim- 
neys, was  chosen  as  the  model  for  many  homes 


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238  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

built  by  New  Englanders  of  ample  means  a 
few  years  before  and  after  1800.  Such  houses 
often  had  a  fine  parapet  rail  entirely  surround- 
ing the  roof.  But  a  powerful  rival  to  the  Dutch- 
cap  dwelling  soon  appeared  in  the  rectangular, 
double,  two-story  house,  which  had  a  central 
hallway  extending  from  front  to  rear,  with  two 
massive  chimneys  on  each  side.  Between  1790 
and  1812  this  comfortable,  commodious,  and 
durable  type  of  house  was  the  controlling  style 
of  home  in  the  big  towns  of  New  England; 
after  that,  it  flourished  in  many  country  sec- 
tions. Subsequent  to  1826,  substantial  dwell- 
ings built  on  the  generous  lines  of  the  Warner 
House  in  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  multi- 
plied apace,  thus  contributing  notably  to  the 
dignity  and  impressiveness  of  many  towns  in 
southern  New  England.  This  Warner  House 
does  not  lend  itself  to  Mr.  Worth's  simple 
method  of  classification;  for  it  was  built  nearly 
a  century  '  before  its  type  became  dominant. 
Similarly  discouraging  to  a  lover  of  general- 
izations is  the  stone  mansion,  built  in  1636,  at 
Newbury,  Massachusetts,  by  John  Spencer, 
who  was  at  one  time  governor  of  the  Newport, 
Rhode  Island,  colony.  The  interior  of  this 
house  closely  resembles  spacious  English  man- 
sions which  date  from  the  middle  of  the  six- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  239 

teenth  century.  So  large  and  roomy  as  to  be 
capable  of  holding  a  great  number  of  people 
seated,  it  has  an  enormous  chimney,  solid 
beams  of  white  oak,  great  window-seats  and 
a  vast  kitchen  —  all  of  which  show  that  the 
house  was  designed  for  people  of  breeding  and 
wealth.  Particularly  impressive  is  the  porch 
facade,  with  its  niche  over  the  rounded  portal 
pediment,  in  which  it  was  doubtless  the  in- 
tention to  place  the  bust  of  some  revered  an- 
cestor of  the  Spencers. 

Of  the  first  home  of  the  greatest  of  New  Eng- 
land governors,  Winthrop,  no  trace  remains 
to-day.  All  that  we  know  definitely  about  this 
house  is  where  it  stood.  The  Book  of  Posses- 
sions, compiled  in  1648,  or  a  year  or  two  later, 
contains  the  original  entries  of  the  earliest  re- 
corded divisions  of  land  in  the  town  of  Boston 
and  is,  in  some  sort,  the  foundation  of  all 
titles  of  real  estate  within  the  old-time  limits. 
This  defines  for  us  the  spot  on  which  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop  decided  to  plant  his  home,  a 
choice  undoubtedly  determined  by  the  spring 
of  water  that  bubbled  up  and  overflowed  just 
to  the  north  of  it,  near  the  old  South  Meeting- 
house; this  was  probably  "  the  excellent 
spring "  to  which  Winthrop 's  attention  was 
called  by  Mr.  Blackstone  when  solicited  to 
move  from  Charlestown,  where  water  was 
scarce.    In  making  a  conveyance  of  this  prop- 


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240  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

erty  (in  1643),  the  governor  described  it  as 
"  that  my  lott  or  parcel  of  land  in  Boston  afore- 
said called  the  Greene  lyeing  by  the  Spring." 
From  this  home,  at  the  corner  of  the  present 
Washington  Street  and  Spring  Lane,  the  great 
and  good  man  chosen  to  be  the  head  of  the 
little  company  of  Puritans  wrote  to  his  wife, 
on  March  28, 1631,  "  I  praise  God,  I  want  noth- 
ing but  thee  and  the  rest  of  my  family."  Like 
many  a  later  American  immigrant,  Winthrop 
made  a  home  in  the  New  World  before  he  felt 
free  to  send  across  the  sea  for  the  one  woman 
who  had  the  power  to  render  that  home  happy. 
With  the  help  of  imagination  and  the  exist- 
ing records,  it  is  possible  to  picture  roughly  this 
home  in  which,  when  Mrs.  Winthrop  and  the 
children  arrived  in  November,  1631,  the  First 
Family  of  New  England  set  up  housekeeping. 
That  the  house  was  built  of  wood  we  know; 
and  it  was  probably  two  stories  high,  with  gar- 
rets; its  end  was  toward  the  main  street,  its 
front  faced  a  garden  that  had  been  made  on 
the  south,  and  its  rear  was  on  Spring  Lane. 
In  time  an  orchard  was  set  out  on  the  eastern 
half  of  the  land,  a  row  of  buttonwood  trees  was 
planted  parallel  with  the  street,  and  there  was 
even  a  lawn  —  which  gave  it  a  bright  and 
cheerful  appearance.  Lawns  appear  to  have 
been  rare;  so  that  "  The  Green  "  was  a  distin- 
guishing name  for  Winthrop 's  homestead. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  241 

Very  simple  and  homely  was  the  life  lived 
under  this  modest  roof-tree.  Doctor  Ellis 
says:  "After  the  arrival  of  the  colonists,  not 
one  of  them,  however  gentle  his  degree  in 
England,  was  free  from  the  necessity  of  manual 
labor  in  the  field,  the  forest,  and  in  building  and 
providing  for  a  home.  The  governor's  wife 
made  and  baked  her  own  batch  of  bread,  and 
from  her  dwelling,  near  the  site  of  the  Old  South 
Church,  would  take  pail  in  hand  and  go  down 
to  fill  it  from  the  spring  that  still  flows  under 
the  basement  of  the  Post  Office." 

Concerning  the  second  Boston  home  of  the 
Winthrops,  on  almost  this  same  site,  it  is 
possible  to  gain  quite  a  clear  idea  from  inven- 
tories which  are  still  extant.  That  there  was 
a  parlor,  hall,  study,  kitchen,  and  entry  (proba- 
bly in  the  rear)  on  the  ground  floor  of  this  house 
is  very  evident  from  these  documents;  and  up 
one  flight  of  stairs  were  to  be  found  a  parlor- 
chamber,  hall-chamber,  and  porch  chamber, 
with  above  these  "  a  garret  over  the  parlor  ", 
and  "  a  garret  over  the  hall."  This  hall  was 
some  such  room  as  English  country  magistrates 
use  for  the  transaction  of  public  business,  and 
probably  served  also  as  a  dining  and  living 
room;  it  is  not  to  be  confused  with  an  entrance 
hall,  usually  to  be  found  only  in  the  rear  of  very 
old  houses  and  always  called  an  "  entry." 

From  the   inventory  left  by  Governor  The- 


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242  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

ophilus  Eaton  of  the  New  Haven  Colony,  when 
he  died  in  1657,  we  may  gain  an  excellent  idea 
of  how  the  living-room  in  a  magistrate's  house 
was  furnished.  For  in  the  Eaton  hall  were  to 
be  found: 

A  drawing  Table  &  a  round  table  £l.  18s. 

A  cubberd  &  2  long  formes,  14s. 

A  cubberd  cloth  &  cushions,  13s.;  4  setwork 
cushions  12s.  £l.  5. 

6  greene  cushions,  12s;  a  greate  chair  with  needle 
worke.     13s.  £1.5. 

2  high  chaires  set  work,  20s;  4  high  stooles  set 
worke,  26s  8d,  £6.  8.  2. 

4  lowe  chaires  set  work,  6s  8d,  £l.  6.  8. 

2  lowe  stooles  set  worke,  10s. 

2  Turkey  Carpette,  £2;  6  high  joyne  stooles,  6s. 
£2.6. 

A  pewter  cistern  &  candlestick,  4s. 

A  pr  of  great  brass  Andirons,  12s. 

A  pr  of  smal.  Andirons,  6s  8d. 

A  pr  of  doggs,  2s  6d. 

A  pr  of  tongues  fire  pan  &  bellowes,  7s. 

These  forms  and  stools  of  various  heights 
took  the  place  of  chairs,  which  were  not  very 
plentiful  in  New  England  thus  early,  the  "  pew- 
ter cistern  "  held  water  or  wine,  and  in  the 
"  cubberd  "  were  kept  the  pewter  plates  used 
daily  on  the  "  drawing  table."  Pewter  was  in 
universal  use  in  America  until  the  Revolution, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  243 

when  porcelain  came  to  take  its  place.  The 
"  garnish  "  of  pewter,  by  which  was  meant  a 
set  of  pewter  platters  or  chargers  and  dishes,  was 
a  source  of  great  pride  to  all  New  Englanders, 
and  the  trade  of  the  pewterer  was  held  to  be  a 
very  influential  and  respectable  one.  Henry 
Shrimpton,  a  Boston  merchant  who  had  made 
a  fortune  in  pewter,  was  so  proud  of  the  source  of 
his  wealth  that  when  his  days  of  opulence  ar- 
rived, he  had  a  great  kettle  placed  on  the  top 
of  his  house  as  a  kind  of  patent  of  nobility. 

To  set  up  housekeeping  without  pewter  would 
have  been  deemed  preposterous  in  the  eight- 
eenth century.  But  a  great  many  other  things 
were  required,  too.  The  kind  of  wedding  out- 
fit a  bride,  who  was  the  well-beloved  daughter 
of  a  fairly  wealthy  father,  had  to  have  at  this 
time,  cannot  be  better  indicated  than  by  quo- 
ting the  list  of  house-furnishings  which  Judge 
Sewall  ordered  from  England  in  1720,1  when  his 
daughter  Judith  was  married.    It  reads  thus: 

Curtains  and  Vallens  for  a  Bed  with  Counterpane 
Head  Cloth  and  Tester  made  of  good  yellow  waterd 
worsted  camlet  with  Triming  well  made  and  Bases 
if  it  be  the  Fashion.  Send  also  of  the  same  Camlet 
and  Triming  as  may  be  enough  to  make  Cushions 
for  the  Chamber  chairs. 

1  See  also  the  list,  three  pages  long,  "  Household  Goods  for  the 
Setting-out  of  a  Bride  in  1758,"  quoted  in  the  appendix  of  Jane 
de  Forest  Shelton's  "  Salt  Box  House." 


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244  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

A  good  fine  large  Chintz  Quilt  well  made. 

A  true  Looking  Glass  of  Black  Walnut  Frame  of 
the  Newest  Fashion  if  the  Fashion  be  good,  as  good 
as  can  be  bought  for  five  or  six  pounds. 

A  second  Looking  Glass  as  good  as  can  be  bought 
for  four  or  five  pounds  same  kind  of  frame. 

A  Duzen  of  good  Black  Walnut  Chairs  fine  Cane 
with  a  Couch. 

A  Duzen  of  Cane  Chairs  of  a  Different  Figure  and 
a  great  Chair  for  a  Chamber;  all  black  Walnut. 

One  bell-metal  Skillet  of  two  Quarts,  one  ditto 
one  Quart. 

One  good  large  Warming  Pan  bottom  and  cover 
fit  for  an  Iron  handle. 

Four  pair  of  strong  Iron  Dogs  with  Brass  heads 
about  0  or  6  shillings  a  pair. 

A  Brass  Hearth  for  a  Chamber  with  Dogs  Shovel 
Tongs  &  Fender  of  the  newest  Fashion  (the  Fire  is 
to  ly  upon  Iron). 

A  strong  Brass  Mortar  That  will  hold  about  a 
Quart  with  a  Pestle. 

Two  pair  of  large  Brass  sliding  Candlesticks  about 
4  shillings  a  Pair. 

Two  pair  of  large  Brass  Candlesticks  not  sliding 
of  the  newest  Fashion  about  5  or  6  shillings  a  pair. 

Four  Brass  Snuffers  with  stands. 

Six  small  strong  Brass  Chafing  dishes  about  4 
shillings  apiece. 

One  Brass  basting  Ladle;  one  larger  Brass  Ladle. 

One  pair  Chamber  Bellows  with  Brass  Noses. 

One' small  hair  Broom  sutable  to  the  Bellows. 

One  Duzen  hard-metal  Pewter  Porringers. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  245 

Four  Duzen  Small  glass  Salt  Cellars  of  white 
glass;  Smooth  not  wrought,  and  without  a  foot. 

A  Duzen  of  good  Ivory-hafted  Knives  and 
Forks. 

The  pewter  porringers  were  for  the  little 
grandchildren,  whom  Judge  Sewall  doubtless 
already  saw,  in  his  mind's  eye,  at  supper  in  Ju- 
dith's nursery.  These  porringers  always  had 
pretty  handles  and  so  admirably  combined 
utility  and  beauty. 

Among  the  really  wealthy,  pewter  was,  of 
course,  only  a  kitchen  necessity,  and  was  often 
arranged  on  a  dresser  which  occupied  the  place 
of  honor  in  the  big  room  where  good  things  of  the 
table  were  prepared.  The  pewter  owned  by 
William  Burnet,  who  came  to  Boston  as  royal 
governor  July  18,  1728,  was  valued  at  £100 
2s  6d. 

Many  a  dainty  concoction  was  doubtless 
prepared  in  these  utensils  by  the  ladies  of  this 
governor's  household,  for  cooking  was  reck- 
oned among  the  necessary  female  accomplish- 
ments of  the  day.  There  were  plenty  of  cook- 
books on  the  market,  however,  for  brides  whose 
home  training  had  been  neglected.  In  1761 
we  find  advertised  "  The  Director  Or  Young 
Woman's  Best  Companion  ",  which  contained 
"  about  three  hundred  receipts  in  Cookery, 
Pastry,   Preserving,    Candying,   Pickling,   Col- 


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246  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

taring,  Physick,  and  Surgery."  This  compre- 
hensive volume  also  gave  instructions  for 
marketing,  directions  for  carving,  and  "  Bills 
of  Fare  for  Every  Month  in  the  year."  A 
little  later  appeared  "  The  Complete  Housewife, 
or  Accomplish *d  Gentlewoman's  Companion  ", 
with  "  upwards  of  six  hundred  of  the  most  ap- 
proved Receipts  of  Cookery,  Pastry,  Confec- 
tionery, Preserving,  Pickles,  Cakes,  Creams, 
Jellies,  Made  Wines,  Cordials,  with  Copper 
Plates  curiously  Engraven  for  the  regular  Dis- 
position or  placing  of  the  various  Dishes  and 
Courses,  and  also  Bills  of  Fare  for  every,inonth 
in  the  year."  All  this  sounds  astonishingly 
modern.  And  even  more  amazing  is  it  to  en- 
counter, in  a  Colonial  newspaper,  the  prototype 
of  the  "  household  budget  "  supposedly  sacred 
to  "  domestic  science  "  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. Yet  the  Boston  News  Letter  of  Novem- 
ber 18,  1728,  prints  a  careful  estimate  of  what 
it  should  cost  to  keep  eight  persons  in  "  Families 
of  Midling  Figure  who  bear  the  Character  of 
being  Genteel."  And  from  the  context  it  is  evi- 
dent that  this  "  scheam  of  expense  "  is  intended 
to  refute  other  "  scheams  "  previously  published 
—  one  of  which  had  rashly  named  two  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds  as  the  entire  annual  outlay 
necessary  to  such  housekeeping. 
The  entries  of  the  November  contribution 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  247 

For  Diet.    For  one  Person  a  Day 

1  Breakfast  Id.  a  Pint  of  Milk  2d 03 

2  Dinner.      Pudding   Bread    meat   Roots 
Pickles  Vinegar  Salt  and  Cheese 00 

N.  B.  In  this  article  of  the  Dinner  I  would  include 
all  the  Raisins  Currants  Suet  Flour  Eggs  Cran- 
berries Apples  &  where  there  are  children  all 
their  Intermeal  Eatings  throughout  the  whole 
Year.  And  I  think  a  Gentleman  cannot  well 
dine  his  family  at  a  lower  rate  than  this 

3  Supper  As  the  Breakfast 03 

4  Small  Beer  for  the  Whole  Day  Winter 

&  Summer X% 

N.  B.    In  this  article  of  the  Beer  I  would  likewise 
include  all  the  Molasses  used  in  the  Family 
not  only  in  Brewing  but  on  other  Occasions. 
For  one  Person  a  Day  in  all ..... .  Is.     4  J/fjd 

For  Whole  Family lis 

For  the  Whole  Family  365  days.  .£  200  15s. 
For  Butter.     2  Firkins  at  68  lb. 

apiece,  16d.  a  lb £      9     Is 

For  Sugar.  Cannot  be  less  than 
10s  a  Month  or  4  weeks  espe- 
cially when  there  are  children  £  6  10s 
For  Candles  but  3  a  Night  Sum- 
mer &  Winter  for  Ordinary  & 
Extraordinary    occasions    at 

15d  for  9  in  the  lb £      7  12s     01 

For  Sand  20s.  Soap  40s.  Washing 
Once  in  4  weeks  at  3s.  a  time 
with  3  Meals  a  Day  at  3s. 
more £      6    5s. 


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348  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

For  One  Maids  Wages £    10 

For  Shoes  after  the  Rate  of  each  3 
Fair  in  a  year  at  0s.  a  Pair  for 
7  Persons,  the  Maid  finding 
her  own £      9  ( 


In  all £849  12s 


No  House  Rents  Mentioned  nor  Bying  Carting 
Pyling  or  Sawing  Fire  wood. 

No  Coffee  Tea  nor  Chocolate 

No  Wine  nor  Cyder  nor  any  other  Spirituous 
Liquor 

No  Pipes  Tobacco  Spice  Nor  Sweetmeats 

No  Hospitality  or  Occasional  Entertaining  either 
Gentlemen  Strangers  Relatives  or  Friends 

No  Acts  of  Charity  nor  Contributions  for  Pious 
Uses 

No  Pocket  Expenses  either  for  Horse  Hire  Trav- 
elling or  Convenient  Recreations 

No  Postage  for  Letters  or  Numberless  other  Oc- 
casions 

No  Charges  of  Nursing 

No  Schooling  for  Children 

No  Buying  of  Books  of  any  Sort  or  Pens  Ink  & 
Paper 

No  Lyings  In 

No  Sickness,  Nothing  to  Apothecary  or  Doctor 

Nor  Buying  Mending  or  Repairing  Household 
Stuff  or  Utensils 

Nothing  to  the  Shnstress  nor  to  the  Taylor  nor  to 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  249 

the  Barber,  nor  to  the  Hatter  nor  to  the  shopkeeper 
&  Therefore  do  Cloaths.    ■ 


The  figures  here  quoted  are  of  far  less  value 
to-day  than  is  the  insight  which  the  "  scheam  " 
affords  us  as  to  how  a  genteel  New  England 
family  of  moderate  income  lived  and  spent  its 
money  nearly  two  centuries  ago. 

In  the  large  towns,  and  where  the  table  to  be 
supplied  was  that  of  people  of  means,  there  was 
a  good  deal  of  variety  in  the  food  served  and  in 
the  manner  of  its  preparation.  "  They  have 
not  forgotten,"  Josselyn  wrote,  "  the  English 
fashion  of  stirring  up  their  appetites  with  va- 
riety of  cooking  their  food."  The  allusions,  in 
Judge  Sewall's  diary,  to  the  good  things  served 
on  his  table  from  time  to  time  fairly  make  one's 
mouth  water,  —  especially  the  desserts,  which 
included  "  Minc'd  Pye,  Aplepy,  tarts,  ginger- 
bread, sugar' d  almonds,  glaz'd  almonds,  honey, 
curds  and  cream,  sage  cheese,  Yokhegg  in 
milk  chockolett,  figgs,  oranges,  apples,  quinces, 
strawberries,  cherries  and  raspberries." 

The  traveler  Bennet,  who  was  in  Boston  in 
1740,  has  left  us  a  statement  as  to  the  prices 
then  current  for  the  staple  foods. 

"  Their  poultry  of  all  sorts  are  as  fine  as  can 
be  desired,  and  they  have  plenty  of  fine  fish  of 
various  kinds,  all  of  which  are  very  cheap.  Take 
the  butcher's  meat  all  together,  in  every  season 


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250 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


of  the  year,  I  believe  it  is  about  twopence  per 
pound  sterling;  the  best  beef  and  mutton,  lamb 
and  veal  are  often  sold  for  sixpence  per  pound 
of  New  England  money,  which  is  some  small 
matter  more  than  one  penny  sterling. 

"  Poultry  in  their  season  are  exceeding 
cheap.  As  good  a  turkey  may  be  bought  for 
about  two  shillings  sterling  as  we  can  buy  in 
London  for  six  or  seven,  and  as  fine  a  goose  for 
tenpence  as  would  cost  three  shillings  and  six- 
pence or  four  shillings  in  London.  ... 

"  Fish,  too,  is  exceeding  cheap.  They  sell  a 
fine  fresh  cod  that  will  weigh  a  dozen  pounds 
or  more,  just  taken  out  of  the  sea,  for  about 
twopence  sterling.  They  have  smelts,  too, 
which  they  sell  as  cheap  as  sprats  are  in  London. 
Salmon,  too,  they  have  in  great  plenty,  and  those 
they  sell  for  about  a  shilling  apiece,  which  will 
weigh  fourteen  or  fifteen  pounds. 

"  They  have  venison  very  plenty.  They  will 
sell  as  fine  a  haunch  for  half  a  crown  as  would 
cost  full  thirty  shillings  in  England.  Bread  is 
much  cheaper  than  we  have  in  England,  but 
is  not  near  so  good.  Butter  is  very  fine  and 
cheaper  than  ever  I  bought  any  in  London;  the 
best  is  sold  all  summer  for  threepence  a  pound." 

This,  as  Weeden  points  out,1  was  the  com- 
fortable diet  of  the  larger  towns  and  of  affluent 
people;   salt  pork  and  fish,  baked  beans,  Indian 

'  "  Economic  and  Social  History  of  New  England,"  p.  541. 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  251 

pudding,  "  boiled  dinner  ",  and  pumpkins  in 
every  style,  constituted  the  diet  of  the  com- 
monalty. The  use  of  potatoes  and  tea  came 
in  together  in  New  England.  Previous  to  1720, 
the  vegetable  mainstay  of  Ireland  was  almost 
unknown  as  an  article  of  food,  and  even  as  late 
as  1750  "  should  any  person  have  raised  so 
large  a  quantity  of  potatoes  as  five  bushels 
great  would  have  been  the  inquiry  among  his 
neighbors,  in  what  manner  he  could  dispose  of 
such  an  abundance." 

Tea  made  its  way  more  easily,  though 
previous  to  1720  it  was  scarcely  used  at  all. 
To  be  sure,  traces  may  be  found  of  copper  tea- 
kettles in  Plymouth  early  in  the  eighteenth 
century;  but  the  kettles  most  generally  used 
were  cast-iron  ones,  made  in  considerable  quanti- 
ties at  Carver,  Massachusetts,  between  1760 
and  1765.  Lewis,  in  his  "  History  of  Lynn  *', 
records  that  "  when  ladies  went  to  visiting 
parties,  each  one  carried  her  tea  cup,  saucer 
and  spoon.  The  tea  cups  were  of  the  best 
china,  very  small,  containing  as  much  as  a  com- 
mon wine  glass."  A  letter  written  in  1740  de- 
clares: "  Tea  is  now  become  the  darling  of  our 
women.  Almost  every  little  tradesman's  wife 
must  set  sipping  tea  for  an  hour  or  more  in  the 
morning,  and  it  may  be  again  in  the  afternoon 
if  they  can  get  it.  They  talk  of  bestowing 
thirty  or  forty  shillings  upon  a  tea  equipage 


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252  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

as  they  call  it.  There  is  the  silver  spoons,  silver 
tongs,  and  many  other  trinkets  that  I  cannot 
name."  Women's  weaknesses  always  get  into 
print,  and  tea-drinking,  of  course,  came  in  for 
its  share  of  lampooning.  Witness  the  follow- 
ing, which  seems  to  me  well  worth  quoting  as 
an  example  of  the  grotesque  and  highly  in- 
volved humor  of  this  period.  I  copy  it  from 
the  Boston  Evening  Post  of  October  12,  1767: 

Know  all  Men  (and  Women)  by  these  Presents 
That  I,  Jane  Teakettle,  in  the  Township  of  Green 
Tea  and  County  of  Bohea  and  Province  of  Loaf 
Sugar,  do  owe  and  stand  indebted  unto  Margery 
Tea-Pot,  in  the  Township  of  Cream-Pot,  in  the 
County  of  Bread  and  Butter  and  province  of  Loaf 
Sugar  aforesaid,  in  the  Sura  of  Fifty  Pounds  Lawful 
Money,  in  Cups  and  Saucers,  to  be  paid  unto  said 
Margery  Tea-Pot,  on  or  before  the  Tenth  Day  of 
Hot-Water  next  ensuing.  As  witness  my  Hand 
this  Ninth  Day  of  MUk-Bisket,  and  in  the  Fifty  first 
year  of  Gossips  Reign,  1738. 

Jane  Teakettle  X 
Sealed  and  delivered  in 
Presence  of  us, 

Jane  Slop-Bowl 

Bridget  Sugar-Tongs, 

Dorothy  Tea-Spoons 

Yet  when  giving  up  tea  could  do  any  good 
women  '  gave   it  up   gladly.     "  The   following 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  253 

agreement ",  we  read  in  the  Boston  Evening  Post 
of  February  12,  1770,  "  has  lately  been  come 
into  by  upwards  of  300  Mistresses  of  Families 
in  this  Town;  in  which  Number  the  Ladies  of 
the  highest  rank  and  Influence,  that  could  be 
waited  upon  in  so  short  a  Time,  are  included: 


Boston,  January  31,  1770. 
At  a  time  when  our  invaluable  Rights  and  Priv- 
ileges are  attacked  in  an  unconstitutional  and  most 
alarming  Manner,  and  as  we  find  we  are  reproached 
for  not  being  so  ready  as  could  be  desired,  to  lend 
our  Assistance,  we  think  it  our  Duty  perfectly  to 
concur  with  the  true  Friends  of  Liberty  in  all  Meas- 
ures they  have  taken  to  save  this  Abused  Country 
from  Ruin  and  Slavery.  And  particularly,  we  join 
with  the  very  respectable  Body  of  Merchants  and 
other  Inhabitants  of  this  Town,  who  met  in  Faneuil 
Hall  the  23d  of  this  Instant,  in  their  Resolutions, 
totally  to  abstain  from  the  Use  of  Tea;  And  as  the 
greatest  Part  of  the  Revenue  arising  by  Virtue  of 
the  late  Acts,  is  produced  from  the  Duty  paid  upon 
Tea,  which  Revenue  is  wholly  expended  to  support 
the  American  Board  of  Commissioners;  WE,  the 
Subscribers,  do  strictly  engage,  that  we  will  totally 
abstain  from  the  Use  of  that  Article  (Sickness  ex- 
cepted) not  only  in  our  respective  Families,  but 
that  we  will  absolutely  refuse  it,  if  it  should  be 
offered  to  us  upon  any  Occasion  whatsoever.  This 
Agreement  we  cheerfully  come  into,  as  we  believe 
the  very  distressed  Situation  of  our  Country  requires 


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254  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

it  and  we  do  hereby  oblige  ourselves  religiously  to 
observe  it,  till  the  late  Revenue  Acts  are  repealed. 

The  coming  together  of  Colonial  women  in 
this  spirited  mariner  was  an  even  more  revolu- 
tionary step  than  was  taken  by  the  men  when 
they  determined  to  oppose  the  King's  forces 
with  arms.  Mrs.  Hutchinson  had  hypnotized 
the  women  of  her  day  into  hatching  a  heresy 
and  there  had  been  special  prayer-meetings 
for  women  in  Whitefield's  time.  But  for 
women  to  assemble  with  any  other  than  a 
purely  religious  motive  was  an  unheard-of 
thing.  It  is  exceedingly  significant,  too,  that 
the  avowed  object  of  their  organization  was  to 
abandon  one  of  the  very  few  pleasures  which 
were  theirs.  Tea-drinking  meant  far  more  to 
women  then  than  it  does  now.  Not  lightly, 
by  any  means,  did  one  abstainer  write: 

"  Farewell  the  teaboard  with  its  gaudy  equipage 
Of  cups  and  saucers,  creambucket,  sugar  tongs, 
The  pretty  tea-chest,  also  lately  stored 
With  Hyson,  Congo  and  best  double-fine. 
Full  many  a  joyous  moment  have  I  sat  by  ye 
Hearing  the  girls  tattle,   the  old   maids  talk 

scandal, 
And  the  spruce  coxcomb  laugh  at  —  maybe  — 

nothing.  .  .  ." 

But,  though  tea-drinking  was  abandoned, 
the  social  hours  at  which  tea  had  been  the 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  255 

beverage  continued.  For  was  there  not  more 
and  graver  matter  than  ever  to  discuss?  Sub- 
stitutes for  tea  had  accordingly  to  be  found, 
and,  since  none  of  these  proved  very  satisfactory, 
—  though  Liberty  Tea  and  Labrador  Tea  were 
loudly  praised  in  the  patriotic  public  press  — 
coffee  soon  came  to  be  consumed  in  great 
quantities.  Thus  we  find  Mrs.  John  Adams 
writing,  on  July  31,  1777,  after  the  war  had 
actually  begun: 

"  There  is  a  great  scarcity  of  Sugar  and  coffee, 
articles  which  the  female  part  of  the  State  is 
very  loath  to  give  up,  especially  whilst  they 
consider  the  great  scarcity  occasioned  by  the 
merchants  having  secreted  a  large  quantity.  .  .  . 
It  was  rumored  that  an  eminent  stingy  wealthy 
merchant  (who  is  a  bachelor)  had  a  hogshead  of 
coffee  in  his  store  which  he  refused  to  sell  the 
committee  under  six  shillings  per  pound.  A 
number  of  females,  some  say  a  hundred,  some 
say  more,  assembled  with  a  cart  and  trunks, 
marched  down  to  the  warehouse  and  demanded 
the  keys  which  he  refused  to  deliver.  Upon 
which  one  of  them  siezed  him  by  his  neck  and 
tossed  him  into  the  cart.  Upon  his  finding 
no  quarter  he  delivered  the  keys  when  they 
tipped  up  the  cart  and  discharged  him;  then 
opened  the  warehouse,  hoisted  out  the  coffee 
themselves,  put  [it]  into  the  trunks  and  drove 
off.    It  is  reported  that  he  had  personal  chas- 


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256  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

tisements  among  them,  but  this,  I  believe  was 
not  true.  A  large  concourse  of  men  stood 
amazed,  silent  spectators  of  the  whole  transac- 
tion." 

Which  would  seem  to  prove  that  there  were 
militant  women  in  America  more  than  a  century 
before  Mrs.  Pankhurst  saw  the  light  of  day  in 
England! 

In  the  sparsely  settled  districts,  giving  up 
tea  involved  little  sacrifice,  for  the  beverage 
was  not  much  used  there  thus  early.  A  very 
good  idea  of  the  living  conditions  of  prosperous 
farmer-folk  in  Rhode  Island,  about  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  is  gained  from  the 
will  of  Robert  Hazard,  who,  in  providing  for 
his  "  Dearly  beloved  wife ",  mentions  specif- 
ically what  seemed  to  him  enough  to  make  her 
comfortable  for  the  rest  of  her  life:  fifty  pounds 
a  year,  "  four  cows  to  be  kept  summer  and  win- 
ter yearly  and  every  year  ",  "  a  negro  woman 
named  Phebee",  "  one  Rideing  Mare,  Such  a 
one  as  She  Shall  Chuse  Out  of  all  my  Jades, 
with  a  new  Saddle  and  new  Bridle."  She  was 
to  have  an  allowance' of  wood,  beef,  and  pork 
yearly,  the  "  beef  to  be  Killed  and  Dressed,  and 
brought  to  her  into  her  house;  "  she  was  given 
"  Six  Dung-hill  fowl  ",  and  "  six  Geese  with 
the  privilege  of  raising  what  Increase  She  Can, 
but  Shall  put  of  [off]  all  of  them  to  Six  by  the 
last  of  January  yearly."    Her  furniture  was  to 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  257 

consist  of  one  feather-bed,  with  six  chairs,  "  two 
Iron  pots  one  brass  Kettle,  two  pair  of  Pott- 
hooks,  two  Trammels  ",  various  pewter  dishes 
and  platters,  some  large,  some  "  middling 
size  ",  pewter  basins,  and  silver  spoons.  One 
piece  of  CambUtt  was  also  given,  "  Saving  so 
much  of  it  as  I  give  to  my  Daughter  Mary  to 
Make  her  a  Cloak  ",  of  linen  the  piece  "  called 
the  fine  piece  ",  also  a  piece  of  fine  worsted 
cloth,  worth  forty  pounds  of  wool  yearly,  and  a 
"  linnen  wheel,  and  a  Woollen  Wheel."  She 
was  to  have  two  rooms,  "  one  a  fire  Room,  the 
other  a  Bed  room  Such  as  She  Shall  Chuse  in 
either  of  my  two  Houses  ",  and  the  "  Improve- 
ment of  a  quarter  of  an  Acre  of  Land  where  She 
Shall  Chuse  it  to  be  Well  fenced  for  her  Use 
yearly."  Andirons,  fire-shovel,  and  warming- 
pan  are  also  assured  to  the  widow  by  this  will. 1 
Whether  the  "  Rideing  Mare "  mentioned 
was  a  Narragansett  pacer  does  not  appear,  but 
this  would  have  been  very  natural,  for  these 
famous  horses  were  raised  in  Narragansett  and 
were  very  highly  regarded.  A  large  number  of 
them  were  exported  annually  and  still  more  sent 
to  the  West  Indies  and  to  Virginia.  So  great 
was  their  value  that  finally  all  the  good  mares 
were  sold  from  out  the  country,  thus  repeating, 
as  Caroline  Hazard  points  out,  the  old  fable 
of  killing  the  goose  that  laid  the  golden  egg. 

1  "  College  Tom,"  by  Caroline  Hazard,  p.  32. 


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258  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

These  pacers  had  great  endurance  and  were 
capable  of  carrying  heavy  burdens  in  addition 
to  one  or  two  riders.  They  had  speed,  too. 
Races  which  they  ran  on  what  is  now  Narragan- 
sett  Pier  beach  are  enthusiastically  described 
by  many  an  old  writer. 

Improvements  in  every-day  living  came  very 
slowly  in  the  country  districts  of  New  England, 
for  the  descendants  of  both  Pilgrims  and  Puri- 
tans were  content  for  many  years  to  adhere  to 
old-fashioned  ways.  Thus  a  traveler  alight- 
ing at  a  New  England  farmhouse  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  would  have  encountered 
conditions  nearly  the  same  as  those  which  ex- 
isted among  people  of  the  same  class  in  old 
colony  times.  He  would  have  found  the  great 
chimney  with  its  open  fireplace,  and  real  chim- 
ney-corner, its  splint-bottom  chairs,  spinning- 
wheel,  and  loom.  For  refreshment  he  would 
have  been  offered  a  mug  of  cider  or  a  cana- 
kin  of  rum.  At  dinner  would  be  seen  a  boiled 
leg  of  salt  pork,  or  boiled  ribs  of  salt  beef, 
with  mustard  or  horseradish,  pickles,  and  hot 
vegetables.  The  table  would  be  set  with  plain 
delft  and  with  steel  knives.  Rye  and  Indian 
bread  would  be  served  on  a  wooden  trencher. 
Pumpkin  pie  would  very  likely  be  the  dessert. 
Tumblers  there  might  have  been  (so  called  from 
the  fact  that  no  matter  how  you  laid  them  down, 
they  balanced  themselves  back  into  an  upright 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  259 

position) ;  and,  by  this  time,  there  would  proba- 
bly have  been  rude  steel  forks,  thus  making 
unnecessary  the  use,  for  toilet  purposes,  of  the 
ewers  and  basins  which  played  so  important  a 
part  in  the  period  when  fingers  were  used  to  hold 
the  food  on  the  plate  or  convey  it  to  the  mouth. 
If  our  traveler  stayed  the  night  and  the  time 
were  winter,  he  would  go  up  to  a  freezing  attic, 
undress  with  only  a  braided  woolen  mat  be- 
tween  himself  and  the  icy  floor  and  stretch 
himself  to  rest  on  a  feather  bed  placed  on  a 
sack  of  straw.  The  only  "  spring  "  in  his  couch 
would  come  as  a  result  of  the  tautness  with 
which  the  cords  under  the  feathers  had  been 
stretched  across  the  solid  maple  bedstead. 
Home-made  blankets  and  a  blue  woolen  cover- 
let, woven  in  the  family  loom,  would  consti- 
tute his  coverings,  and  in  the  morning  he  would 
make  his  simple  toilet  down  before  the  "  sink  " 
of  the  lean-to  next  the  kitchen  —  after  he  had 
broken  the  ice  in  the  bucket  in  order  to  get 
his  meager  supply  of  water.  The  tooth-brush 
was  a  luxury  still  unknown  in  primitive  circles; 
regular  ablutions  of  any  kind  and  to  any  extent 
were,  indeed,  somewhat  of  an  innovation.  In- 
asmuch as  we  find  the  author  of  "  Les  Loix  de 
la  Galanterie "  counseling  in  1644:  "Every 
day  one  should  take  pains  to  wash  one's  hands 
and  one  should  also  wash  one's  face  almost  as 
often  ",  this  is  not  greatly  to  be  wondered  at. 


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260  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

French  gallantry  having  so  recently  begun  to 
wash  its  face  daily,  New  England  yeomanry 
could  not  be  expected  to  have  progressed  far, 
only  a  century  and  half  later,  in  delicate  care 
of  the  person. 

For  the  sake  of  promoting  good  feeling,  how- 
ever, we  will  assume  that  our  traveler  comes 
to  breakfast  as  clean  as  the  manners  of  the  time 
demanded.  What  would  he  find  spread  out 
there  for  his  delectation?  Ham  and  eggs  very 
likely,  or  salt  fish  prepared  with  cream,  or  bean 
porridge  made  from  stock  to  which  a  ham  bone 
had  contributed  liberally,  or  cold  corned  beef 
with  hot  potatoes.  Usually  there  was  hot 
bread  (called  "  biscuits  ",  though  more  nearly 
of  the  muffin  variety),  and  always  there  were 
sauces  and  pickles. 

The  "  boiled  dinner "  to  which,  on  hotel 
menus,  the  descriptive  words  "  New  England  " 
are  still  universally  appended,  was,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  universal  jrihce  de  resistance  of  the 
comfortable  but  uncultivated  householder  of 
olden  times.  It  was  prepared  in  a  single  great 
pot,  the  meat  being  put  in  first,  and  then  —  at 
intervals  properly  calculated  to  turn  the  whole 
thing  out  cooked,  just  as  it  should  be,  the  minute 
the  big  clock  in  the  corner  should  strike  the 
hour  of  noon  —  were  added  potatoes,  beets, 
squash,  turnip,  and  cabbage,  with  very  likely 
a  bag  of  Indian  pudding  into  the  bargain.    Such 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  261 

a  dish  was  a  meal  of  itself,  neither  dessert  nor 
bread  being  regarded  as  necessary  to  its  com- 
pleteness. 

The  "  pudding  "  of  New  England  was  often 
by  way  of  being  a  "  sweet  "  in  that  it  was  made 
of  molasses  and  butter  as  well  as  of  Indian  corn. 
And,  strange  to  relate,  it  was  served  first! 
Hence  the  old  saying:  "  I  came  in  season  —  in 
pudding  time."  At  the  house  of  John  Adams 
there  was  served,  as  late  as  1817,  a  dinner  whose 
first  course  consisted  of  this  species  of  Indian 
pudding,  the  second  of  veal,  bacon,  neck  of 
mutton,  and  vegetables.  On  gala  occasion 
there  were  much  more  elaborate  dishes  of 
course,  as  we  have  seen  to  be  the  case  at  the 
birth  celebrations  conducted  by  Judge  Sewall. 
And,  on  Saturday,  everybody  ate  fish  for  din- 
ner. This  universal  eating  of  fish  was  in  order 
that  the  fisheries  might  not  fail  of  support; 
Saturday  rather  than  Friday  was  chosen,  be- 
cause the  Papists  ate  fish  on  Friday.  Judge 
Sewall  frequently  speaks  with  unction  of  his  Sat- 
urday dinner  of  fish;  codfish  balls  on  Sunday 
morning  are  a  cherished  New  England  survival. 

Pumpkins  were  very  highly  regarded  as  food. 


"  We  have  pumpkins  at  morning  and  pumpkins 
at  noon, 

If  it  were  not  for  pumpkins  we  should  be  un- 
done," 


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262  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

sang  a  native  poet.  Madam  Knight  met  this 
vegetable  stand-by  often  on  her  journey,  —  of 
which  we  shall  hear  in  a  later  chapter,  —  in  the 
form  of  "  pumpkin  sauce "  and  "  pumpkin 
bred."  By  Johnson's  time  New  Englanders 
had  "  Apple  Pear  and  Quince  Tarts  "  to  sup- 
plement their  former  pumpkin  pies.  Johnny- 
cake,  that  other  distinctively  New  England 
dish,  was  really  journey-cake,  so  called  from 
the  fact  that  it  was  the  mainstay  of  our  fore- 
fathers when  they  went  on  long  horseback 
trips.  The  Indian  corn  from  which  it  was  made 
was  carried  in  a  pouch  and  mixed,  before  eating, 
with  snow  in  winter  and  water  in  summer. 
Johnny-cake  was  held  to  be  the  most  sustain- 
ing form  of  food  that  could  possibly  be  trans- 
ported in  condensed  form. 

Before  leaving  the  pumpkin,  however,  note 
must  be  made  of  its  sartorial  function  in  the 
New  England  of  early  days,  from  which  the 
epithet  "  pumpkin-head "  was  derived.  In 
the  lively  "  History  of  Connecticut,"  compiled 
by  the  Reverend  Samuel  Peters,  this  term  is 
thus  explained:  "It  originated  from  the  'Blue 
Laws  '  which  enjoined  every  male  to  have  his 
hair  cut  round  by  a  cap.  When  caps  were  not 
to  be  had  they  substituted  the  hard  shell  of  a 
pumpkin,  which  being  put  on  the  head  every 
Saturday,  the  hair  is  cut  by  the  shell  all  round 
the  head.     Whatever  religious  virtue  is  sup- 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  263 

posed  to  be  derived  from  this  custom,  I  know 
not;  but  there  is  much  prudence  in  it:  first, 
it  prevents  the  hair  from  snarling;  secondly 
it  saves  the  use  of  combs,  bags  and  ribbons; 
thirdly  the  hair  cannot  incommode  the  eyes 
by  falling  over  them;  and  fourthly,  such  per- 
sons as  have  lost  their  ears  for  heresy,  and  other 
wickedness,  cannot  conceal  their  misfortune 
and  disgrace." 

In  an  age  when  hair-cutting  was  thus  crudely 
conducted  and  bathing  only  occasional,  table 
manners  naturally  would  be  pretty  primitive 
for  the  most  part.  We  should  be  shocked  to- 
day if,  when  we  sat  down  to  dinner  a  guest 
should  pull  a  clasp  knife  out  of  his  pocket,  cut 
his  meat  into  small  pieces,  and  then  feed  him- 
self by  conveying  these  pieces  to  his  mouth 
with  his  fingers.  Yet  this  was  undoubtedly 
the  way  the  early  Puritans  ate.  Hence  the 
proverb:  "fingers  were  made  before  forks", 
and  the  great  store  of  napkins  which,  with 
huge  ewers  for  water,  formed  such  an  important 
part  of  every  housekeeping  outfit. 

As  the  years  passed,  certain  codes  developed 
to  govern  the  use  of  these  household  necessities. 
In  a  little  book  compiled  by  Eleazar  Moody, 
a  Boston  schoolmaster,  are  embalmed  rules 
for  the  conduct  of  children  at  the  meeting- 
house, at  home,  at  the  table,  in  company,  in 
"  discourse  ",  at  the  school,  when  abroad,  and 


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264  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

when  among  other  children,  which  shed  a  flood 
of  light  upon  the  manners  of  the  period.  At 
no  time  might  a  child  approach  its  parents 
without  a  bow;  and  every  child  was  expected 
to  bear  the  reproach  of  parents,  "  without  mur- 
muring or  sullenness,  even  when  such  reproofs  or 
corrections  be  causeless  or  undeserved."  In 
the  division  given  over  to  table  manners,  Mr. 
Moody  directs:  "  Smell  not  of  thy  Meat,  nor 
put  it  to  thy  Nose;  turn  it  not  the  other  side 
upward  to  view  it  upon  thy  Plate  or  Trencher; 
Throw  not  anything  under  the  Table.  .  .  .  Foul 
not  the  napkin  all  over,  but  at  one  corner  only. 
.  .  .  Gnaw  not  Bones  at  the  Table  but  clean 
them  with  thy  knife  (unless  they  be  very  small 
ones)  and  hold  them  not  with  a  whole  hand, 
but  with  two  Fingers.  When  thou  blowest 
thy  Nose,  let  thy  handkerchief  be  used,"  Mr. 
Moody  counsels  further  and  adds:  "  Spit  not  in 
the  Room,  but  in  the  Corner,  —  and  rub  it  with 
thy  Foot." 

-Heavy  drinking  was  the  common  custom  of 
old  New  England.  Baron  Riedesel  wrote: 
"  most  of  the  males  have  a  strong  passion  for 
strong  drink,  especially  rum  and  other  alcoholic 
beverages,"  and  John  Adams  declared:  "  if  the 
ancients  drank  wine  as  our  people  drink  rum 
and  cider  it  is  no  wonder  we  hear  of  so  many 
possessed  with  devils."  It  is  interesting  to 
note  that,  according  to  one  of  Adams'  descend- 


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OLD   NEW    ENGLAND  265 

ants,  that  worthy  spoke  as  an  expert  on  the 
consumption  of  strong  drink.  To  the  end  of 
the  great  man's  life,  we  are  told,  "  a  large  tank- 
ard of  hard  cider  was  his  morning  draught  be- 
fore breakfast.** 

Brewing  delectable  drinks  was  held  to  be 
a  nice  accomplishment,  and  the  best  way  to 
prepare  a  punch,  an  egg-nogg,  or  a  posset  was 
regarded  as  a  necessary  part  of  every  lady's  ed- 
ucational outfit.  The  Weekly  Post-Boy  for  1743 
gives  the  following  "  Receipt  for  -  all  Young 
Ladies  that  are  going  to  be  married,  to  make  a 
Sack  Posset: " 


"  From  fam'd  Barbados  on  the  western  Main 
Fetch  sugar  half  a  pound;    fetch  Sack  from 

Spain 
A  Pint,  and  from  the  East  Indian  Coast 
Nutmeg,  the  Glory  of  our  Northern  Toast. 
O'er  flaming  Coals  together  let  them  heat, 
Till  the  all  conquering  Sack  dissolve  the  Sweet. 
O'er  such  another  Fire  set  Eggs  twice  ten, 
New  born  from  foot  of  Cock  and  Rump  of  Hen; 
Stir  them  with  steady  Hand,  and  Conscience 

pricking, 
To  see  th'  untimely  Fate  of  Twenty  Chicken. 
From   shining   Shelf   take   down   your   brazen 

SkiUet, 
A  quart  of  milk  from  gentle  Cow  will  fill  it, 
When  boil'd  and  cool'd  put  Milk  and  Sack  to 
tt  .  Egg. 
Unite  them  firmly  like  the  tripple  League; 


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266  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Then  covered  close,  together  let  them  dwell 
Till  Miss  twice   sings  —  You   must  not  Kiss 

and  tell. 
Each  Lad  and  Lass  snatch  up  their  murdering 

Spoon, 
And  fall  on  fiercely  like  a  Starved  Dragoon." 

To  brew  delectable  drinks,  to  read,  and  to 
sew  constituted  all  the  desirable  female  ac- 
complishments. Writing  was  long  held  to  be 
a  work  of  supererogation  in  a  woman.  Scarcely 
one  woman  in  a  dozen  could  write  in  1700,  and 
of  those  whose  names  appear  in  the  recorded 
deeds  of  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
less  than  forty  per  cent,  sign  except  by  use  of  a 
mark. 

In  humbler  households,  the  goodwife  was,  in 
her  own  person,  a  dozen  different  workers. 
For  one  thing,  she  was  a  nurse,  raising  in  her 
little  botanical  garden  lovage,  sage,  saffron, 
and  the  other  herbs  so  likely  to  be  needed 
during  sickness.  She  could  spin,  too,  and  so 
set  an  example  when  it  was  decided  to  punish 
England  by  wearing  only  garments  of  home- 
spun manufacture.  Providence,  Rhode  Island, 
was  the  scene  of  an  organization  formed  for 
this  purpose  in  1766.  Then  seventeen  young 
ladies,  called  the  Daughters  of  Liberty,  met  at 
the  house  of  Deacon  Ephraim  Bowen  and  spun 
all  day  for  the  public  benefit.  The  next  day 
their  numbers  had  so  increased  that  the  court- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  267 

house  was  none  too  large  for  them.  At  about 
the  same  time,  another  band  of  Daughters 
gathered  at  Newport,  this  group  including  all 
the  beautiful  and  brilliant  girls  for  which  that 
town  was  then  so  celebrated.  Because  these 
girls  were  pretty  —  and  because  their  cause  was 
just  —  the  president  and  the  first  graduating 
class  of  Brown  University,  then  called  Rhode 
Island  College,  wore  clothing  at  the  Commence- 
ment of  1769  made  wholly  of  American  home- 
spun. 

Far  and  wide  throughout  New  England,  this 
movement  on  the  part  of  the  women  spread, 
and  in  Newbury,  Beverly,  Ipswich,  and  Row- 
ley spinning  matches  were  held,  one  of  which 
is  thus  described  in  the  Boston  News-Letter: 

"  Rowley.  A  number  of  thirty-three  respecta- 
ble ladies  of  the  town  met  at  sunrise  [the  month 
of  July]  with  their  wheels  to  spend  the  day  at 
the  house  of  the  Rev'd  Jedediah  Jewell  in  the 
laudable  design  of  a  spinning  match.  At  an 
hour  before  sunset,  the  ladies  then  appearing 
neatly  dressed,  principally  in  homespun,  a  polite 
and  generous  repast  of  American  production 
was  set  for  their  entertainment,  after  which, 
there  being  present  many  spectators  of  both 
sexes,  Mr.  Jewell  delivered  a  profitable  dis- 
course from  Romans  XII.  2:  Not  slothful 
in  business,  fervent  in  spirit,  serving  the  Lord." 

We    need    not    follow    the    many    sermons 


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268  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

preached  on  similar  texts  to  these  patriotic 
women,  but  we  must  not  deny  ourselves  the 
pleasure  of  some  of  the  "  poetry  "  which  re- 
flects the  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  times.  In 
the  Massachusetts  Gazette  of  November  9,  1767, 
may  be  found  these  lines: 

"  Young  ladies  in  town  and  those  that  live 
round 
Let  a  friend  at  this  season  advise  you. 
Since  money's  so  scarce  and  the  times  growing 
worse, 
Strange  things  may  soon  hap  and  surprise 
you. 
First,  then,  throw  aside  your  high  top  knots  of 
pride, 
Wear  none  but  your  own  country  linen. 
Of    economy  boast.    Let    your  pride  be  the 
most 
To   show   cloaths   of   your  own   make   and 
spinning." 

These  "  cloaths  of  their  own  make  and 
spinning  "  formed  a  very  important  part  of  a 
young  housekeeper's  outfit.  For  the  house- 
linen  of  early  days  was  largely  home-made, 
"  linen  "  always  signifying  exactly  that,  while 
"  holland "  meant  whatever  was  imported. 
Home-made  table-cloths  were  of  diaper  pat- 
terns, —  two  widths,  a  yard  wide,  sewed  to- 
gether. The  best  ones  would  probably  be  of 
holland.    By  an  unwritten  law  the  girl  supplied 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  269 

the  bed  and  bedding,1  even  to  the  curtains  and 
valances;  but  the  duty  of  procuring  the  bed- 
steads devolved  upon  the  man. 

Having  spun  the  flax  and  wool  and  ac- 
cumulated in  her  linen  chest  enough  house- 
linen  to  last  the  family  a  long  time,  a  young 
housekeeper  could  turn  her  attention  to  the  • 
matter  of  making  pretty  clothes  for  herself.  In 
those  days  the  art  of  embroidery  played  an  im- 
portant role;  "  neck-handkerchiefs  and  ruf- 
fles were  wrought  with  marvellous  stitches, 
and  a  long  band  of  fine  white  linen  was  worked 
with  many  soft-colored  crewels,  in  a  trailing 
pattern  of  vines,  flowers,  and  butterflies  that 
would  make  the  petticoat  it  was  to  border  the 
envy  of  all  beholders." 

For  the  styles  the  house-mother  of  moderate 
means  examined  the  wardrobe  of  a  doll  which 
had  been  decked  out  in  the  latest  mode.  From 
the  New  England  Weekly  Journal  of  July  2, 
1788,  I  copy  the  following: 

"  To  be  seen  at  MRS.  HANNAH  TEATTS, 
Mantua-maker  at  the  head  of  Summer  street, 
Boston,  a  Baby  drest  after  the  newest  fashion 
of  Mantuas  and  Night-Gowns  and  everything 
belonging  to  a  Dress,  lately  arrived  in  Capt. 
White  from  London,  any  ladies  that  desire  to 


had  a  supply  of  blankets,  also,  white  and  blue  and  yellow  plaids." 
"  Salt  Box  House." 


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270  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

see  it,  may  either  come  or  send  &  she  will  be 
ready  to  wait  on  'em,  if  they  come  to  the  House 
it  is  Five  Shillings,  and  if  she  waits  on  them  it  is 
Seven  Shillings." 

Would  that  some  diarist  with  a  lively  pen 
had  left  us  a  description  of  the  women  she  met 
-  examining  the  garments  displayed  by  Madam 
Teatts!  Were  the  styles  in  hats  introduced  in 
the  same  way,  we  wonder?  If  so,  there  must 
once  have  been  a  day  when  a  doll,  either  in  the 
Teatts  establishment  or  elsewhere,  first  bowed 
its  head  under  the  burden  of  a  calash,  that  very 
distinctive  head-covering  whose  virtues  were 
thus  ambiguously  celebrated  in  a  Norwich 
newspaper  of  1780: 

"  Hail,  great  Calash!   o'erwhelming  veil. 
By  all-indulgent  Heaven 
To  sallow  nymphs  and  maidens  stale, 
In  sportive  kindness  given." 

More  sunshade  than  bonnet,  this  extraordi- 
nary production  l  is  said  to  have  been  invented 
by  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  in  1765.  It  was 
usually  made  of  thin  green  silk,  shirred  on 
strong  lengths  of  rattan  or  whalebone,  which 
had  been  placed  two  or  three  inches  apart. 
Sometimes  it  was  finished  with  a  narrow  cape. 
It  received  its  name  from   the  old-fashioned 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  271 

chaise  or  calash,  which  it  greatly  resembled 
when  it  had  been  drawn  out  over  the  face  by 
pulling  narrow  ribbon  bridles  fastened  to  its 
edge  on  top.  Calashes  were  frequently  a  foot 
and  a  half  in  diameter,  having  been  originally 
designed  to  form  an  adequate  covering  for  the 
high-dressed  and  be-wigged  heads  of  the  period. 
The  "  lust  for  wigs,"  it  must  be  understood, 
had  pretty  nearly  everybody  in  its  grip  by  this 
time.  The  Apostle  John  Eliot  had  denounced 
wigs  eloquently,  Reverend  Mr.  Noyes  had 
thundered  about  them  in  the  pulpit,  and  the 
legislature  of  Massachusetts  had  made  a  law 
against  them.  Yet  Governor  Barefoot  of  New 
Hampshire  wore  a  periwig  as  early  as  1670, 
John  Wilson  and  Cotton  Mather  adopted  this 
fashion  in  their  turn,  and  in  1676  Wait  Win- 
throp  wrote  to  his  brother  in  New  London:  "  I 
send  herewith  the  best  wig  that  is  to  be  had  in 
ye  countrye.  Mr.  Sergeant  brought  it  from 
England  for  his  own  use  and  says  it  cost  him 
two  guineas  and  six  shillings,  and  that  he  never 
wore  it  six  howers.  He  tells  me  will  have  three 
pounds  for  it."  By  1716  the  fashion  of  wearing 
wigs  had  become  well-nigh  universal  among 
men,  and  we  read  in  the  Boston  News-Letter  of 
August  14,  1729:  "Taken  from  the  shop  of 
Powers  Mariott  Barber,  a  light  Flaxen  Naturall 
Wigg  Parted  from  the  forehead  to  the  Crown. 
The  Narrow  Ribband  is  of  a  Red  Pink  Colour. 


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272  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

The  Caul  is  in  Rows  of  Red  Green  &  White." 
The  newspapers  of  this  period  are  full,  indeed, 
of  advertisements  concerning  barbers  who  will 
dress  wigs,  wigs  which  are  for  sale,  and  wigs 
which  have  been  lost  or  stolen. 

Hawthorne  gives  this  partial  list  of  wigs:  The 
tie,  the  brigadier,  the  spencer,  the  atbemarle, 
the  major,  the  ramillies,  the  grave  full-bottom, 
and  the  giddy  feather-top.  To  which  might  be 
added  many  other  varieties  of  the  wig  family. 
The  sequence  of  fashions  in  this  particular  is 
very  interesting  to  trace  as  reflected  in  the  por- 
traits of  Smibert,  Blackburn,  Copley  and  Gil- 
bert Stuart. 

Even  the  children  wore  on  their  heads  these 
expensive  and  uncomfortable  deformities.  And 
young  women,  after  having  so  maltreated  their 
hair  that  they  had  very  little  of  it  left,  were 
very  glad  to  take  refuge  in  wigs.  Eliza  South- 
gate  of  Scarborough,  Maine,  writes  her  mother 
from  Boston,  where  she  was  visiting  in 
1800,  that  she  must  have  "  a  5  dollar  bill  by 
the  post  immediately  "  in  order  to  buy  a  wig 
in  time  to  wear  to  the  next  Assembly.1  "  I  must 
either  cut  my  hair  or  have  one,"  she  insists, 
"  for  I  cannot  dress  it  at  all  stylish.  Mrs. 
Coffin  bought  Eleanor's  and  will  get  me  one 
just  like  it;  how  much  time  it  will  save  —  in  one 
year  we  could  save  it  in  pins  and  paper,  besides 

1  "  Letters  of  Eliia  Southgate  Bowne:  "  Charles  Scribner'a  Sons. 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  273 

the  trouble.  At  the  Assembly  I  was  quite 
ashamed  of  my  head  for  nobody  has  long 
hair." 

The  useful  puppet  was  probably  employed 
to  show  fashions  in  wigs,  as  well  as  in  "  mantuas" 
and  "  night-gowns." 

To  conclude  that  all  dressmaking  was  done 
in  the  house,  from  patterns  and  styles  thus 
acquired,  would,  however,  be  a  mistake.  Well- 
to-do  families  had  long  patronized  tailors,  and 
that  quite  extensively,  as  the  following  bill  of 
William  Sweatland  for  work  done  for  the  family 
of  Jonathan  Corwin  of  Salem  clearly  shows. 
Corwin  was  the  judge  who  tried  the  Salem 
witches;  his  name  is  inextricably  associated 
with  the  sad  end  of  Rebecca  Nourse  of  Dan- 
vers,  whom  he  sent  to  the  gallows,  July  19, 
1692.  His  tailor's  bill  in  manuscript  may  be 
seen  in  the  library  of  the  American  Antiquarian 
Society,  Worcester,  Massachusetts. 


d. 


Sept.  29,  1679.    To  plaiting  a  gown  for 

Mrs 3 

To  makeing  a  Childs  Coat 6 

To  makeing  a  Scarlett  petticoat  with 

Silver  Lace  for  Mrs 9 

For  new  makeing  a  plush  somar  for 

Mrs 6 

Dec.  22, 1679.    For  making  a  Somar  for 

your  Maide 10 


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274  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

£.       a.     d. 
Mar.  10, 1670.    To  a  yard  of  Callico  8 

To  1  Douzen  and  J^  of  silver  buttons  1      6 

To  thread 4 

To  makeing  a  broad  cloth  hatte 14 . 

To  making  a  haire  Camcottcoat 9 

To  making  new  halfsleeves  to  a  silk 

Coascett 1 

March  2fi  To  altering  and  fitting  a 

paire  of  Stays  for  Mrs 1 

Ap.  3,  1680,  to  makeing  a  Gowne  for 

ye  Maide 10 

May  20.    For  removing  buttons  of  ye 

coat 6 

Juli  25,  1680.    For  makeing  two  Hatts 

and  Jacketts  for  your  two  sonnes  19 

Aug.  14.    To  makeing  a  white  Scarson- 

nett  plaited  Gowne  for  Mrs 8 

To  makeing  a  black  broad  cloth  Coat 

for  yourselfe 9 

Sep.  3,  1680,  To  makeing  a  Silke  Laced 

Gowne  for  Mrs 1       8 

Oct.   7,    1680,   to   makeing  a   Young 

ChildsCoate 4 

To  faceing  your  Owne  Coate  Sleeves  1 

To  new  plaiting  a  petty  Coat  for  Mrs.  1       6 

Nov.  7.    To  makeing  a  black  broad 

Cloth  Gowne  for  Mrs 18 

Feb.  26,  1680-1  To  searing  a  Petty 

Coat  for  Mrs 6 

Sum  is,  £  8      4s   lOd 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  275 

The  Corwin  family,  being  of  the  magistracy, 
might  wear  elegant  garments  without  let  or 
hindrance.  But  if  they  had  not  been  "  gentle- 
folk," such  clothes  would  have  been  forbidden 
them  by  law.  For  there  was  sumptuary  legis- 
lation in  these  early  days.  In  October,  1651, 
the  court  of  Massachusetts  declared  that  "  in- 
tolerable excesse  and  bravery  hath  crept  in 
upon  us  and  especially  among  people  of  mean 
condition  "  and  registered  their  "  utter  detes- 
tation and  dislike  that  men  of  mean  conditions 
and  callings  should  take  upon  them  the  garb 
of  gentlemen  by  wearing  gold  or  silver  lace, 
or  buttons  or  points  at  their  knees,  to  walk  in 
great  boots,  or  women  of  the  same  ranke,  to 
wear  silk  or  tiffany  hoods  or  scarfs,  which, 
though  allowable  to  persons  of  greater  estates, 
or  more  liberal  education,  they  judge  it  intol- 
erable in  persons  of  such  like  condition." 
Whereupon  it  was  ordered  that  with  the  excep- 
tion of  "  magistrates,  or  any  publick  officer  of 
this  jurisdiction,  their  wives  and  children,  mili- 
tary officers  or  soldiers,  or  any  other  whose 
education  or  employment  have  been  above  the 
ordinary  degree,  or  whose  estates  have  been 
considerable,  though  now  decayed,  or  who  were 
not  worth  two  hundred  pounds,  no  person  should 
transgress  this  law  under  penalty  of  ten  shil- 
lings." 

This  law  was  inspired  by  belief  in  the  value 


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276  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

of  class  distinctions.  From  the  beginning,  in 
New  England,  there  were  three  distinct  classes: 
the  gentry,  the  yeomanry,  and  the  tradesfolk; 
and  the  intention  was  to  preserve  these  dis- 
tinctions here  just  as  they  have  been  preserved 
in  the  motherland.  Ship-building  and  the  com- 
merce that  followed  in  its  wake,  manufacturing, 
and  the  New  England  keenness  in  bargains  and 
business  soon  availed,  however,  to  break  down 
classes;  and  presently  the  Revolution  raised 
the  lowly  and  leveled  those  of  high  estate  in  a 
highly  disconcerting  fashion. 

Then  it  was  that  servants  began  to  be  help 
—  "  hired  help  "  as  the  phrase  goes  in  New 
England  to  this  day. 

Most  of  the  service  during  the  early  colonial 
period  was  performed  by  "  redemptioners," 
and  contemporary  literature  is  full  of  interest- 
ing allusions  to  the  terms  of  their  contracts. 
Lechford  tells  us  in  his  "  Note-books "  of 
Elizabeth  Evans,  who  came  from  Ireland  to 
serve  John  Wheelwright,  minister,  for  three 
years,  her  wages  being  three  pounds  per  annum 
and  passage  paid,  and  of  Margery  Bateman, 
who,  after  five  years  of  service  in  Charlestown, 
was  to  receive  a  she-goat  to  help  her  in  starting 
in  life.  In  the  Boston  News-Letter  may  be 
found  an  advertisement  in  which  Robert  Gallon 
offers  "  a  few  boy  servants  indentured  for  seven 
years  and  girls  for  four  years  ",  while  "  Mrs. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  277 

Johnson's  Captivity  "  tells  of  apprenticed  serv- 
ants bound  for  a  term  of  years  who,  in  1730, 
were  sold  from  ships  in  Boston.  As  late  as 
August  1,  1817,  indeed,  Samuel  Breck,  a  Bos- 
Ionian  then  living  in  Philadelphia,  wrote  with 
no  sense  of  shame: 

"  I  went  on  board  the  ship  John  from  Amster- 
dam .  .  .  and  I  purchased  one  German  Swiss 
for  Mrs.  Ross  and  two  French  Swiss  for  my- 
self. ...  I  gave  for  the  woman  $76,  which  is 
her  passage-money,  with  a  promise  of  $20  at 
the  end  of  three  years  if  she  serves  me  faith* 
fully;  clothing  and  maintenance  of  course. 
The  boy  had  paid  twenty-six  guilders  toward 
his  passage-money  which  I  agreed  to  give  him 
at  the  end  of  three  years;  in  addition  to  which 
I  paid  fifty-three  dollars  and  sixty  cents  for  his 
passage,  and  for  two  years  he  is  to  have  six 
weeks  schooling  each  year." 

Breck  had  grown  up  in  a  community  in  which 
indentured  servants  were  an  established  in- 
stitution. 

From  the  Boston  Evening  Post  of  September 
28,  1767,  I  copy  the  following: 

TEN  DOLLARS  REWARD 

Ran  away  from  Capt.  Aaron  Willard,  of  Lan- 
caster, in  the  County  of  Worcester,  on  the  28th 
of  June  last,  an  indentured  servant  named  Patrick 


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278  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

Ryon,  a  Native  of  Ireland;  he  is  a  likely  well- 
limbed  Lad,  about  20  years  of  Age,  5  Feet  9  inches 
high  or  thereabouts,  of  a  ruddy  fair  Complexion, 
and  wears  his  own  Hair;  Had  on  when  he  went 
away  a  brownish  cloth  colour'd  Coat,  trimmed  with 
metal  buttons,  a  Jacket  of  the  same  Colour,  without 
Sleeves,  trimmed  with  yellow  metal  Buttons,  a  pair 
of  mixt  blue  and  white  Stockings,  and  also  carried 
with  him  a  pair  or  two  of  Trowsers  made  of  Tow 
Cloth  not  whitened. 

Whoever  will  take  up  the  aforesaid  Servant  and 
bring  him  to  his  Master,  or  secure  him  in  any  of 
his  Majesty's  Gaols,  and  give  information  thereof 
to  his  said  Master,  shall  be  entitled  to  Ten  Dollars 
Reward,  and  all  necessary  Charges  paid  by  Aaron 
Willard,  jun. 

All  masters  of  Vessels  and  others  are  hereby  cau- 
tioned against  concealing  or  carrying  off  said  Servant, 
as  they  would  avoid  the  Penalty  of  the  Law. 

These  advertisements  make  clear  —  and  there 
is  plenty  of  other  evidence  besides  —  that  the 
time  of  the  indentured  servant  belonged  abso- 
lutely to  the  master,  and  that  he  had  the  right 
to  do  with  it  what  he  would.  Slaves,  too,  as  well 
as  bond  servants,  were  held  in  old  New  England. 
I  have  found  negroes  advertised  in  the  same 
newspaper  list  with  tea,  velvet,  and  candles; 
and  Randolph  could  report  two  hundred  slaves 
here  in  1676.1     The  Quakers  protested  vigor- 

P&pen,"  II.,  219. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  279 

ously  against  the  slave-trade  in  Rhode  Island, 
yet  Newport  continued  to  be  the  receiving  and 
disbursing  center  for  most  of  the  negroes  brought 
from  Guinea  and  Madagascar. 

Not  only  were  negroes  of  both  sexes  bought 
and  sold,1  but  Indians  also  appear  to  have  been 
leased  out  as  household  drudges.  In  the  New 
England  Weekly  Journal  of  March  17,  1729, 
I  find  advertised: 

"Dt3&~An  Indian  Woman's  Time  for  about  2 
Years,  who  can  do  all  sorts  of  Household  Work." 

It  was  quite  a  common  thing,  in  the  early 
days,  to  whip  servants  who  were  particularly 
annoying,  and  many  instances  can  be  found  of 
a  master  who  had  to  be  fined  for  over-indul- 
gence in  this  practice.  In  Boston  and  other 
towns,  accordingly,  commissioners  were  elected 
who  had  power  to  sentence,  for  whippings  ex- 
ceeding ten  stripes,  servants  who  behaved 
"  disobediently  and  disorderly  toward  their  mas- 
ters and  governours."  Hartford,  Connecticut, 
had  a  similar  law,  and  Mrs.  Earle  quotes  the 
case  of  Susan  Coles  of  that  town,  who,  "  for  her 
rebellious  caredge  towards  her  mistris,  is  to  be 
sent  to  the  house  of  correction,  and  be  kept  to 
hard  labour  and  coarse  dyet,  to  be  brought  forth 


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280  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

the  next  Lecture  Day  to  be  publiquely  corrected 
and  so  to  be  corrected  weekly  until  Order  be 
given  to  the  Contrary." 

Yet  treating  maids  "  as  members  of  the 
family  "  did  not  seem  to  produce  the  desired 
result.  John  Wynter,  the  head  agent  of  the 
settlement  at  Richmonds  Island,  Maine,  gives 
a  very  bad  character,  in  1689,  to  a  maid  there 
employed,  and  this  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  "  for  a  yeare  &  quarter  or  more  she  lay 
with  my  daughter  oppon  a  good  feather  bed." 

In  the  old  days,  as  to-day,  the  servant  prob- 
lem bore  most  heavily  on  those  who  lived  "  out 
of  town."  Governor  Winthrop's  daughter, 
Mary,  who  in  1633  was  married  to  the  eldest 
son  of  Deputy-Governor  Dudley  and  went  to 
live  in  Ipswich,  Massachusetts,  had  very  great 
difficulty  in  conducting  the  affairs  of  her  house- 
hold and  is  repeatedly  found  beseeching  her 
mother  to  send  her  "  a  good  lusty  servant."  On 
April  28,  1636,  she  writes  agitatedly:  "I  am 
forced  to  crave  your  help  as  speedily  as  maye 
be,  my  mayd  being  to  goe  away  upon  May 
day  and  I  am  like  to  be  altogether  destitute.  I 
cannot  get  her  to  stay  a  month  longer.  .  .  . 
My  husband  is  willing  to  stand  what  you  shall 
think  meet  to  give.  ...  I  desire  that  the  mayd 
that  you  provide  me  may  be  one  that  hath  been 
used  to  all  kinds  of  work  and  must  refuse  none. 
If  she  have  skill  in  the  dayrie  I  shall  be  the 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  281 

gladder."  When  such  a  "  inayd  "  was  secured 
and  sent  down,  however,  she  proved  to  be  not 
at  all  the  treasure  desired  though  "  at  her  first 
coming  she  carried  herself  dutifully  as  be- 
came a  servant.  But  since  through  mine  and 
my  husband's  forbearance  towards  her  for  small 
faults  she  hath  got  such  a  head,  and  is  growen 
soe  insolent  that  her  carriage  towards  us,  es- 
pecially myselfe,  is  unsufferable.  If  I  bid  her 
doe  a  thing  shee  will  bid  me  doe  it  myselfe,  and 
she  says  how  she  can  give  content  as  well  as 
any  servant  but  she  will  not,  and  sayes  if  I 
love  not  quietnes  I  was  never  so  fitted  in  my 
life  for  shee  would  make  me  have  enough  of  it. 
...  If  I  tell  my  husband  of  her  behavior  to 
me,  upon  examination  shee  will  denie  all  that 
she  hath  done  or  spoken;  so  that  we  know  not 
how  to  proceed  against  her." 

Yet  they  did  proceed  in  precisely  the  same 
way  that  hundreds  of  harassed  housewives 
have  since  proceeded:  they  "hired  another 
maide  "  and  went  through  the  whole  perform- 
ance da  capo. 

Servants  being  a  more  or  less  unknown  quan- 
tity, then  as  now,  the  question  arises:  How  did 
our  great-great-grandmothers  manage  to  pre- 
serve the  beautiful  china  which  has  come  down 
to  us  through  so  many  generations?  The 
answer  is  that  the  Puritan  housekeeper  kept 
her  china  by  not  using  it. 


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282  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

In  cabinets  and  cases  with  glass  doors,  on 
shelves,  and  in  racks  made  especially  for  it, 
on  mantelpieces,  tops  of  cupboards,  cases, 
presses,  and  chests  of  drawers  were  ranged  these 
precious  relics.  They  did  not,  by  any  means, 
find  their  way  daily  to  the  table,  as  would  be 
the  case  in  our  time.  With  the  dishes  were  to 
be  found  as  ornaments  china  animals  of  various 
kinds,  hideous  things  to  the  modern  eye  but 
very  interesting  because  they  were  exceeding 
dear  to  the  children  of  an  earlier  day. 

To  the  cities,  when  our  ships  began  to  sail 
back  and  forth  from  China,  there  came  a  great 
deal  of  choice  pottery  from  the  Orient.1  In 
some  of  the  more  prosperous  families  this  kind 
of  ware  was  in  daily  use  about  the  time  of  the 
Revolution.  But  everybody  did  not  care  for 
Eastern  art,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following 
description  of  a  teapot  found  in  a  long  fable 
dated  1754: 

"  A  tawdry  Tea  Pot  a  la  mode 
Where  Art  her  utmost  skill  bestow'd, 
Was  much  esteem 'd  for  being  old, 
And  on  its  sides  with  Red  and  Gold 
Strange  beasts  were  drawn  in  taste  Chinese, 


t  opposite  the  Heart  and  Crown  i: 


ditto,  enamel 'ri  Punch  Bowls,  blue  and  white  ditto  of  v 
blue  and  white  China  Cups  &,  Saucers  Ac.  Ac." 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  283 

And  frightful  Fish  and  hump-backed  Trees. 

High  in  an  elegant  beaufet 

This  pompous  utensil  was  set. 

And  near  it  on  a  Marble  Slab 

Forsaken  by  some  careless  Drab 

A  veteran  Scrubbing  Brush  was  plac'd 

And  the  rich  furniture  disgrac'd." 

Which  tells  us  that  Oriental  teapots  were  no 
less  ugly  —  and  New  England  housemaids  no 
less  careless  —  in  1754  than  in  1914. 

A  man  who  made  too  free  with  his  own  china, 
or  in  any  other  way  lived  more  elegantly  than 
his  neighbors  thought  he  should,  was  by  no 
means  left  in  ignorance  of  the  disapproval  in 
which  he  was  held.  Thus  Hooper,  of  the  Har- 
vard Class  of  1763,  was  universally  called 
"  King "  Hooper  because  of  the  magnificent 
style  in  which  his  household  was  conducted. 
The  beautiful  mansion  which  he  built  at  Dan- 
vers,  Massachusetts,  is  still  standing  in  perfect 
condition  and  is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of 
eighteenth-century  architecture  in  New  Eng- 
land. Its  first  owner  became  a  refugee  in  1775 
and  died  insolvent  in  1790. 

Dignity  rather  than  luxury  was  the  ap- 
proved characteristic  of  the  comfortable  village 
home;  and  this  was  largely  attained  by  the 
architecture  of  the  doorway  and  the  spacious 
lines  of  the  entrance-hall.  Often  these  doorways 
were  quite  intricate  in  their  design,  but  they 


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284  SOCIAL.   LIFE    IN 

were  almost  always  restrained  in  decoration  and 
created  the  effect  of  fine  simplicity.  Piazzas 
were  rare,  but  many  houses  had  a  spacious 
porch  before  the  entrance,  which  on  special 
occasions  was  used  for  sitting  out.  The  finer 
residences  had  knockers  on  the  front  door,  and 
always,  instead  of  door-knobs,  latches  were 
used,  iron  latches  in  some  cases,  wooden  ones 
in  other.  Where  the  latch  had  no  thumb-piece, 
and  the  more  primitive  latches  were  always 
without  this  contrivance,  a  string  was  attached, 
and  a  hole  bored  for  the  purpose  of  letting  the 
string  through  just  above  the  latch.  Thus, 
when  the  latch-string  hung  out,  the  door  could 
be  opened  from  the  outside;  locking  up  was 
simply  a  matter  of  pulling  in  the  string. 

The  prevailing  color  of  the  houses  was  yellow 
or  red,  and  until  the  nineteenth  century  there 
were  no  blinds.  Wooden  shutters  inside  were 
common,  a  survival  of  the  days  when,  because 
of  the  fear  of  the  Indians,  heavy  wooden  doors 
were  in  every  home  ready  to  be  swung  across 
the  windows  and  used  as  a  barricade.  In  the 
more  elegant  houses,  the  walls  would  be  hung 
with  landscape  wall-paper;  but  in  humbler 
dwellings,  the  walls,  like  the  floors,  were  bare. 
The  latter  were  frequently  painted  yellow  and 
in  seaboard  towns  sprinkled  with  white  sea-sand 
swept  into  fanciful  patterns. 

Occasionally  a  housewife  would  rebel  at  the 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  285 

blank  ugliness  of  her  floors.  One  such  deter- 
mined to  make  herself  a  carpet.1  She  secured  a 
large  square  of  sail-cloth  and  proceeded  to  paint 
on  it,  with  such  colors  as  she  could  procure, 
a  pattern  of  flowers  of  every  kind  she  had  ever 
seen  and  of  many  —  such  as  blue  roses  and 
green  Klies  —  she  had  never  seen.  When  fin- 
ished, she  covered  her  product  with  a  thick  coat 
of  varnish,  and  might  have  enjoyed  the  result 
a  good  deal,  but  that  an  old  deacon,  who 
chanced  to  call  in,  asked  her  solemnly:  "  Surely, 
Sister  Brown,  you  do  not  expect  to  have  all  this 
and  keaven,  besides?  " 

Since  many  very  charming  books  have  been 
written  on  the  house-furnishings  of  colonial 
and  later  periods,  I  shall  content  myself  with 
just  a  reference  here  to  the  high-boys  and  low- 
boys, the  carved  chests  and  high-posted  beds, 
the  fascinating  quilts  and  curious  hangings  of 
these  long-ago  days  in  New  England.  But  I 
will  not  slight  the  heart  of  the  house,  the  kitchen 
with  its  wide  fireplace,  its  chimney-corner  (liter- 
ally that  in  the  old  days),  its  crane,  jack,  spit, 
and  pothook.  In  such  a  kitchen  a  tin  candle- 
stick with  a  long  back  was  usually  suspended 
from  the  wall  over  the  mantel,  while  beams  and 
ceilings  were  hung  with  ears  of  corn,  crooknecks, 
and  flitches  of  meat. 

1  The  oarpeta  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  usually 
for  tables,  not  for  floors  at  all,  it  should,  however,  be  rei 
See  Governor  Baton's  inventory  above. 


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286  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Comestible  comfort  was  typical  of  the  New 
England  hearthstone.  Even  where  only  the 
utensils  of  an  old-time  household  survive,  —  as 
in  the  ample  kitchen  of  the  Dorothy  Q.  house 
in  Quincy,  Massachusetts,  —  no  great  stretch 
of  imagination  is  required  to  picture  the  bustling 
preparations  which  must  here  have  gone  on 
when  Samuel  Sewall  arrived  to  spend  the  night, 
or  Sir  Harry  Frankland  and  Agnes  Surriage 
sent  down  to  be  cooked  for  supper  the  eels  that 
they  had  just  caught  in  the  brook  near  by.  Here, 
as  in  the  kitchens  of  most  old  New  England 
houses,  may  be  seen  a  huge  chest  of  sturdy  con- 
struction. For  rich  and  poor  alike,  when  they 
set  up  housekeeping,  were  equipped  with  a 
chest  and  a  feather  bed.  Here,  too,  is  the  tin 
kitchen  for  roasting  meat  and  baking  bread, 
a  churn,  a  piggin  for  dishing  up  water,  a  swift 
fastened  to  the  table  to  wind  wool,  with  its 
reel,  which  clicked  intelligently  at  the  end  of 
every  forty  threads,  thus  letting  its  manipulator 
know  that  after  seven  such  clicks  she  had 
wound  her  skein.  But  there  is  no  clock  in  this 
kitchen,  which  dates  from  1635.  New  Eng- 
land's first  clock  was  the  property  of  John  Dav- 
enport, in  the  New  Haven  colony,  who  died  in 
1670.  And  as  late  as  1780  a  clock  cost  no  less 
than  twenty-one  pounds  "  hard  money."  But 
hour-glasses  there  were;  and  many  a  maiden 
timed   cooking   which   had   to  be  counted   in 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


CHAPTER  Ml 


KEEPING   A  DIARY 


THE  men  and  women  of  early  New  Eng- 
land did  not  necessarily  wait  until  they 
had  married  and  settled  down  before 
beginning  to  keep  a  diary;  some  of  the  most 
interesting  journals  I  have  seen  were  from  the 
pens  of  children  and  college  students.  But  it 
was  quite  a  common  thing,  none  the  less,  for  a 
diary  to  begin  as  does  Deacon  John  Tudor's: 
"  1732  June  15.  I  was  married  to  Ms  Jane 
Varney.  We  was  Married  by  Dr.  Timy  Cutler 
in  Christ  Church  in  Boston  at  9  o'clock  fore- 
noon." Following  which  immediately  comes 
the  entry:  "  July  17.  Went  to  House  keeping.* 
Thus  we  appear  to  be  justified  in  placing  the 
diary  chapter  of  this  book  just  after  that  de- 
voted to  the  large  and  varied  business  of  launch- 
ing a  home. 

John  Quincy  Adams  began  to  keep  a  diary 
at  the  age  of  eleven  and  continued  the  practice, 
almost  without  interruption,  for  sixty -eight 
years.  The  results  of  his  industry,  as  edited 
and  amplified  by  Charles  Francis  Adams,  make 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  289 

6ve  large  volumes.  Doctor  Manasseh  Cutler 
of  Ipswich,  from  whose  entertaining  journal 
we  shall  have  occasion  to  quote,  kept  a  careful 
record  of  his  personal  affairs  from  1765  until 
1823.  And  Judge  Sewall,  as  we  know,  covered 
in  his  very  important  diary  practically  every 
event  of  consequence  during  his  full  and  varied 
life. 

The  Judge  of  the  Witches  generally  used  for 
his  journal  interleaved  almanacs,  though  he 
afterwards  expanded  some  of  his  first  entries 
for  the  pages  of  his  diary  proper.  A  friend  who 
has  made  a  careful  study  of  manuscript  diaries, 
and  has  examined  hundreds,  probably,  of  these 
fascinating  relics  of  a  vanished  day,  tells  me 
that  their  kinds  are  legion.  "  All  diaries  prob- 
ably had  covers  once,"  she  says,  "  and  I  believe 
that  these  covers  were  usually  of  leather,  al- 
though sometimes,  of  course,  paper  was  made 
to  serve;  I  have  seen  some  for  which  pretty 
bits  of  wall-paper  had  been  thus  utilized.  The 
'  pocketbook '  with  a  brass  clasp  or  a  leather 
strap  was  not  uncommon,  and  some  of  the 
leather-bound  books  are  very  old.  Many  dia- 
ries, however,  were  kept  in  interleaved  alma- 
nacs, to  which  extra  leaves,  —  either  of  letter- 
paper,  —  or  perhaps  the  unused  sheets  of  old 
letters  with  writing  on  one  side  —  were  added. 
These  sheets  were  of  all  sizes,  sometimes  square, 
and  sometimes  long  and  narrow;  but  the  paper 


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290  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

was  invariably  good,  and  ink  was  always  used, 
—  even  in  soldiers'  journals." 

One  of  the  earliest  diaries  extant  is  that  of 
Reverend  William  Adams,  who  was  born  May 
27,  1650,  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1671,  and 
from  1673  until  his  death  in  1685  presided  over 
the  Congregational  Church  in  Dedham,  Massa- 
chusetts. This  journal  was  written  in  a  small 
blank  volume,  which  once  had  clasps,  and  is 
bound  in  black  leather.  It  contains  perhaps 
four  hundred  pages,  of  which  fifteen  are  covered 
by  Mr.  Adams'  entries,  inscribed  in  a  small, 
compressed  hand,  with  every  letter  very  care- 
fully'formed.  That  young  Adams  often  trav- 
eled from  Cambridge  to  Ipswich  "  afoot,"  that 
he  once  got  "  lost  in  Charlestowne  woods  and  lay 
in  ye  woods  all  night  so  bewildered  I  took  N.  for 
S.  ^rad  contra,"  and  that  Samuel  Sewall  some- 
times accompanied  him  on  his  student  tramps 
are  interesting  early  entries. 

The  twenty-third  birthday  of  this  earnest 
young  graduate  found  him  "  removed  from 
Cambridge  to  Dedham  to  ye  solemn  under- 
taking of  ye  ministry  there  on  triall  for  future 
settlement.  As  we  were  coming  to  Dedham 
my  horse  stumbled  and  I  had  a  fall  tho  I  re- 
ceived no  hurt;  which  caused  me  to  reflect  upon 
myselfe  whether  I  had  not  been  something 
lifted  up,  yt  there  were  so  many  come  to 
attend  on  me,  and  to  adore  ye  wisdom  and 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  291 

grace  of  God  in  yt  he  can  and  doth  effectually 
bring  down  high  thoughts  without  bringing 
any  reall  hurt  to  his  servants. 

"  July  29.  The  Church  and  inhabitants  of 
Dedham  agreed  to  give  me  ye  summe  of  100£ 
money  or  money's  worth  towards  ye  purchase 
of  a  habitation  for  my  settlement,  to  be  paid  at 
3  moths  warning. 

"  Dec.  8.    I  was  ordained.  .  .  . 

"  Jan.  30,  1674.  I  was  admitted  to  the  free- 
dom of  ye  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts. 

"  Oct.  SI.  I  was  married  to  Mary  Manning 
of  Cambridge. 

"  Nov.  12,  1675.  My  daughter  Mary  was 
born.  .  .  . 

"  April  13,  1676.  My  daughter  Mary 
died.  .  .  . 

"  March  26,  1677.  My  son  Eliphalet  .  .  . 
was  born. 

"  Jan.  17,  1678.  My  son  William  was 
born.  .  .  . 

"  June  24,  1679.  My  dear  and  loving  wife 
departed  this  life  after  we  had  been  married 
and  lived  together  4  years  and  8  months, 
whereby  I  am  bereaved  of  a  sweet  and  pleasant 
companion  and  left  in  a  very  lonely  and  solitary 
condition.  ' 

"  Anno  1680  —  March  27.  I  was  married 
to  Alice  Bradford,  daughter  to  Major  William 
Bradford  of  PHmouth." 


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292  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

This  is  almost  the  last  entry  in  the  diary. 
In  another  hand,  we  soon  find  the  record  of  the 
young  pastor's  premature  death. 

Another  Massachusetts  parson,  Reverend 
Ebenezer  Parkinan,  kept  a  journal  by  means 
of  which  we  are  enabled  to  have  an  intimate 
share  in  small-town  New  England  life  during 
the  early  eighteenth  century.  This  diary, 
edited  by  Harriette  M.  Forbes  and  given  to  the 
public  by  the  Westborough  Historical  Society, 
reflects  as  does  no  other  volume  which  I  have 
been  privileged  to  see  the  joys  and  sorrows,  the 
petty  cares  and  economies  of  a  conscientious 
country  parson.  As  we  read,  we  find  ourselves 
worried,  just  as  the  clerical  writer  was,  over  the 
failure  of  the  parish  to  pay  his  salary  promptly, 
his  ominously  scanty  supply  of  firewood,  and 
the  imminent  recurrence  of  the  Harvard  Col- 
lege bills  for  the  education  of  "  son  Eh'as." 

Ebenezer  Parkman  was  born  in  Boston,  Sep- 
tember 5,  1708,  graduated  from  Harvard  Col- 
lege in  1721,  promptly  married  Mary  Champney 
of  Cambridge,  and  by  her  had  five  children. 
Then,  after  nearly  twelve  years  of  married  life, 
Mrs.  Parkman  died,  and  the  bereaved  husband 
and  father,  though  he  mourned  her  sincerely, 
began  to  look  about  for  some  other  good  woman 
who  would  be  the  head  of  his  home  and  the 
mother  of  his  children.  Thus  we  find  him 
writing  in  his  journal: 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  293 

"  February  17, 1737  N.  B.  Ye  Discovery  of 
my  Inclinations  to  Capt.  Sharp  and  to  Mm. 
by  Yr  urgent  persuasion  I  tarryd  and  lodg'd 
there  —  N.  B.  Mrs.  Susanna  Sharp.  "  Mistress 
Susanna  was  a  maid  of  twenty-one  summers  at 
this  time  and  her  father  was  a  prominent  citi- 
zen and  large  landowner  of  Brookline,  Massa- 
chusetts. We  do  not  wonder  that  a  West- 
borough  minister,  who  was  more  than  ten  years 
her  senior  and  had  five  small  children  to  be 
brought  up,  found  himself  unable  to  persuade 
her  into  matrimony.  Mr.  Parkman  seems  to 
have  done  his  best  but  records  at  last  that 
his  "  arguments "  were  "  fruitless  with  Mrs. 
Susan." 

The  next  lady  to  whom  he  turned  his  atten- 
tion as  a  suitor  was  Miss  Hannah  Breck,  daugh- 
ter of  Reverend  Robert  Breck,  minister  at 
Springfield,  Massachusetts,  and  the  sister  of 
Mrs.  Benjamin  Gott  of  Marlborough.  It  was 
in  the  pleasant  home  of  the  good  doctor  whom 
we  met  in  a  previous  chapter  that  Mr.  Park- 
man  conducted  his  wooing.  Hannah  was  also 
twenty-one  and  by  no  means  lacked  spirit. 
Apparently  she  refused  the  good  parson  at  first 
and  then,  at  his  request,  burned  the  letters  and 
poems  in  which  he  had  been  pouring  out  his 
heart  to  her.  Yet,  not  long  afterwards,  we  find 
him  writing: 

"March  £5,   1737:    Rode  to  Marlborough. 


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294  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Spent  ye  afternoon  at  Dr.  Gott's.  N.  B.  Mrs. 
H — h  B — k  at  ye  Dr.'s  still.  Our  conversation 
of  a  piece  with  what  it  used  to  be.  I  mark  her 
admirable  Conduct,  her  Prudence  and  wisdom, 
her  good  manners  &  her  distinguishing  Respect- 
fulness to  me  wc  accompany  her  Denyals. 
After  it  grew  late  in  ye  Evening  I  rode  home  to 
West.,  through  the  Dark  and  the  Dirt,  but 
cheerfully  and   comfortably    (comparatively)." 

A  week  later  we  find  him  again  at  Doctor 
Gott's.  "  Mrs.  H — h  was  thought  to  be  gone  to 
Mr.  Week's  or  Capt.  Williams,  with  design  to 
lodge  there,  but  she  returned  to  ye  Doctors.  And 
she  gave  me  her  Company  till  it  was  very  late. 
Her  Conversation  was  very  friendly,  and  with 
divers  expressions  of  Singular  and  Peculiar 
Regard.  ...  I  lodged  there,  and  with  great 
satisfaction  &  Composure."  And  although  Mis- 
tress Hannah  had  categorically  said,  on  this 
occasion,  that  she  could  not  "  yield  to  being  a 
step  mother  ",  she  appears  to  have  yielded  in 
the  next  breath;  for  she  married  her  minister 
on  September  11,  1737,  and  began  her  career 
as  first  lady  of  Westborough  by  entertaining 
Paul  Dudley  at  dinner,  a  fortnight  later,  as  he 
rode  back  from  keeping  court  at  Springfield, 
her  former  home. 

The  next  entry  we  are  privileged  to  see  in  the 
journal  shows  that  more  than  forty  years  have 
slipped  away  and  Elias,  the  youngest  of  the 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  295 

eleven  children  born  to  Hannah  and  Ebenezer 
Parkman,  is  a  student  at  Harvard.  The  date 
is  November  4,  1778.  We  read:  "  Elias,  on 
Mr.  Tainter's  Horse  returned  to  Cambridge. 
I  gave  him  14  dollars,  my  newest  Shooes,  a 
variety  of  cloatheing,  half  a  large  Cheese  &c  &c 
May  God  incline  his  Heart  to  Religion  &  Learn- 
ing! " 

Putting  Elias  through  college  was  a  hard 
strain  on  the  parson,  now  well  along  in  years, 
and,  had  not  the  older  brothers  helped,  might 
have  been  impossible.  For  the  depression  of 
the  currency  had  made  Mr.  Parkman 's  salary 
very  inadequate  to  his  needs.  So  poor  was  he 
that  his  gratitude  is  really  touching  when 
"  December  4,  1778:  At  eve  came  Mr.  Elisha 
Forbes  and  his  Wife  to  Visit  us,  and  brought  an 
extraordinary  present.  31  pounds  of  Meat, 
Beef  and  Pork  and  a  Cheese  of  12  lbs.,  and 
supped  with  us.  Mr.  Forbes  also  offered  yt  if 
I  would  take  one  of  ye  Boston  newspaper,  he 
would  pay  for  a  year.  May  God  reward  his 
Benevolence  and  Generosity !  " 

Individuals,  then  as  now,  were  often  more 
generous  than  the  community  of  which  they 
were  a  part.  Thus,  when  the  Town  Meeting 
came  to  consider  making  Mr.  Parkman  "  some 
further  allowance,  considering  the  vast  increase 
of  ye  Necessaries  of  Life,  it  passed  negatively." 
The  worthy  pastor's  only  comment  upon  this  is: 


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296  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  The  proceedings  of  Ye  Town  yesterday  were 
to  my  surprise." 

Old  maids  who  liked  to  visit  the  minister  and 
advise  him  as  to  his  work  were  no  more  un- 
common in  that  day  than  in  this.  On  May  24, 
1779,  we  read:  "  Miss  Eliza  Beats  came  in  to 
see  me  and  consult  me  upon  her  Spiritual  State 
—  mentions  several  Scriptures  She  would  have 
me  preach  upon,  but  which  I  have  already.  As 
to  her  bodily  State,  she  is  grown  exceeding 
dropsical." 

This  lethargic  spinster,  Miss  Eliza  Beals,  was, 
on  the  whole,  less  of  a  thorn  in  Mr.  Parkman's 
side  than  was  Mrs.  Persis  Adams,  who  refused 
to  live  with  her  husband.  On  September  13, 
1779,  we  read: 

"  Had  some  conversation  with  Mr.  Daniel 
Adams  about  his  wife  living  from  him.  He  tells 
me  he  desires  she  would  return  and  that  he 
would  do  anything  reasonable  to  obtain  it. 
P.  M.  he  came  here,  shewd  me  a  Copy  of 
a  Letter  which  he  had  sent  to  her  some 
time  ago,  desiring  her  to  let  him  know  what 
are  her  Difficulty's,  and  what  she  would  have 
■  him  do.  To  which  letter  she  returned  him  no 
Answer." 

"  September  21.  I  rode  to  Mr.  Joseph  Grout's 
to  see  Mrs.  Adams  who  lives  there.  I  dind 
there,  though  Mr.  Grout  and  his  Wife  were 
gone   to  Boston.     Mrs.  Adams   seems   to  be 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  S97 

utterly  unwilling  to  go  to  live  with  her  Hus- 
band again." 

But  ladies  were  not  allowed  to  leave  their 
husbands  lightly  in  those  days,  and  "  a  Com- 
mittee of  ye  Church  "  was  soon  appointed  to 
go  and  reason  with  the  reluctant  Mrs.  Adams. 
After  which  a  Church  Meeting  took  up  "  ye 
Affair  "  in  an  endeavor  to  bring  "  accuser  & 
accused  Face  to  Face."  Mrs.  Adams  was 
present  at  this  meeting,  but  her  husband, 
"  though  notified  seasonably  by  a  Messenger, 
sent  on  purpose  by  ye  Pastor  to  him  ",  did  not 
come.  Then  Mrs.  Adams,  two  months  later, 
**  prays  ye  Church  Meeting  (to  be  otherwise 
next  Monday)  may  be  adjourned  to  some  future 
time,  inasmuch  as  she  cannot  get  ready."  Nor 
was  she  ready  when  the  next  appointed  day 
came.  Mistress  Persis  apparently  knew  her  own 
mind  and  had  made  that  mind  up  not  to  return 
to  her  husband.  We  are  relieved  when  we  read 
later  that  she  is  "  now  supposed  to  be  trying 
for  Relief  in  ye  Civil  Law  ",  and  that  Mr.  Park- 
man,  accepting  this,  "  prayed  and  gave  ye 
Blessing  as  ye  Meeting  was  dissolved,  Novem- 
ber 9, 1780."  The  good  man  had  been  working 
on  this  harassing  matter  for  over  a  year;  and 
at  the  age  of  seventy-seven  such  an  annoyance 
might  very  well  have  been  spared  him. 

Another  of  Mr.  Parkman's  interesting  charges 
was  Tom  Cook,  "  the  honest  thief  ",  who  was 


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298  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

believed  to  have  sold  himself  to  the  Devil,  and 
whose  picturesque  pUferings  color  many  pages 
of  mid-Massachusetts  history.  Tom's  specialty 
was  ingeniously  withdrawing  from  him  that  had 
in  order  that  he  might  bestow  in  Scriptural 
fashion  on  unfortunates  that  had  not.  Mr. 
Farkman  had  baptized  him  as  a  baby  and  so 
always  took  a  fatherly  interest  in  him.  Thus 
we  find  in  the  journal,  under  date  of  August  27, 
1779:  "The  notorious  Thorn.  Cook  came  in 
(he  says)  on  Purpose  to  see  me.  I  gave  him  wt 
admonn  Instruction  and  Caution  I  could  —  I 
beseech  God  to  give  it  Force!  He  leaves  me 
with  fair  Words  —  thankf.  and  Promising." 

Covering  almost  the  same  period  as  the  Park- 
man  diary  is  that  of  Joshua  Hempstead,  which 
the  New  London  County  Historical  Society 
published  a  few  years  ago.  This  is  a  diary  in 
the  strictest  sense  of  the  word  —  a  systematic 
account  of  daily  duties,  occupations,  and  events, 
written  by  a  busy,  keen-eyed  farmer  who  was 
also  a  man  of  affairs.  If  I  were  to  be  asked  to 
name  two  books  only,  by  reading  which  a  good 
insight  might  be  obtained  into  daily  life  in  old 
New  England,  I  think  I  should  name  Sewall's 
diary  and  this  of  Joshua  Hempstead. 

The  writer  of  this  photographic  account  of 
life  in  Connecticut  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  was  born  and  lived  all  his  days  in  the  house 
which  is  now  the  home  of  Anna  Hempstead 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  299 

Branch,  the  poet,  and  which  is  well  known  to  be 
the  oldest  house  in  New  London.  The  original 
of  the  large  octavo  volume  put  out  by  the  His- 
torical Society  comprises  about  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  pages  of  closely  written  manuscript 
without  lines;  these  pages  are  twelve  by  seven 
and  a 'half  inches  in  size.  They  cover  the  years 
from  1711,  when  the  diarist  was  thirty-three, 
to  1758,  the  year  of  his  death.  And  just  as 
Sewall  tells  us  in  his  diary  all  about  the  often 
very  important  happenings  of  which  he  was  a 
part,  so  Hempstead  pictures  for  us  the  trivial 
little  occurrences  that  made  up  the  daily  routine 
of  a  man  who  was  at  once  a  farmer,  a  surveyor, 
a  house  and  ship  carpenter,  an  attorney,  a  stone- 
cutter, a  sailor,  and  a  trader  —  performing,  to 
boot,  the  offices  pertaining  to  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  a  judge  of  probate,  and  an  executor  of 
wills.  Yet,  such  was  the  simplicity  of  the  times, 
that  on  July  18,  1712,  this  same  man  writes: 
"  I  was  at  home  all  day  making  my  Self  a  pr 
Linnen  Breeches  "! 

Hempstead,  being  a  magistrate,  had  a  hand 
in  many  of  the  sordid  criminal  trials  of  the  day. 
When  the  rumor  gets  about  that  Sarah  Bramble 
has  given  birth  to  a  "  Bastard  Child  not  to  be 
found  ",  it  becomes  his  duty  to  investigate.  And 
then  follow  horrible  details  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  poor  woman  is  believed  to  have  killed 
her  unwelcome  offspring.    These  are  in  no  wise 


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300  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

different  from  such  details  when  given  in  the 
yellow  press  of  to-day.  But  not  of  our  time  is 
what  follows: 

"  Tuesday,  April  14,  1752  a  Lecture  Sermon 
pr  by  ye  Revd  Mr  Jewit  on  ye  ocasion  of  Sarah 
Brambles  Suposed  Murder  of  her  Bastard 
Child;  She  being  present  in  the  Broad  'ally  & 
afterwards  Comitted  to  Prison."  No  color,  no 
comment.  The  child  may  have  been  dead  when 
Sarah  attempted  to  dispose  of  its  remains  by 
burning  them,  but  prison  followed  swiftly  just 
the  same. 

Again,  on  October  5,  1756:  "I  was  at  the 
Court  att  the  Meetinghouse  in  ye  foren  to  hear 
the  Tryal  of  Bristow  a  Negro  man  (belonging  to 
the  Revd  Beckwith  of  Lyme)  for  Committing  a 
Rape  on  the  Body  of  Hannah  Beebee  Junr  a 
young  woman  ...  he  was  found  Guilty  & 
Received  Sentance  of  Death  next  day." 

Joshua  Hempstead  died  before  the  disturb- 
ances which  led  up  to  the  Revolution  had  be- 
come acute,  so  that  we  have  no  entries  covering 
those  events.  But  Deacon  John  Tudor  person- 
ally witnessed  many  of  these  interesting  inci- 
dents and  has  left  us  some  valuable  descriptions 
of  the  first  Stamp  Act  Riots,  the  Boston  Mas- 
sacre, the  famous  Tea  Party,  and  the  Lexington 
skirmish.  But  the  present  volume  is  not  con- 
cerned with  wars  and  warriors;  I  much  prefer, 
therefore,  to  quote  the  good   deacon  on   the 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  301 

union  services  held  Sunday,  November  10,  1782, 
in  King's  Chapel,  Boston: 

"  10  A.  M.  I  went  to  the  Chappie  to  hear 
Mr.  Freeman  Read  prayers  &  preach.  His  Tex 
was  Search  the  Scriptures.  The  Old  South 
people  met  with  the  Church  people.  In  the 
forenoon  the  Chh  of  England  Service  was  car- 
red  on  &  p.  m.  the  Congregatioul  way.  .  .  . 
And  the  Reason  of  the  2  Congregations  meeting 
in  this  way  was,  that  when  the  British  troops 
had  possession  of  the  Town,  they  cruelly  tore 
down  all  the  inside  of  the  Old  South  Meeting 
house  to  exercise  their  Horses  in.  So  that  when 
the  people  that  were  forssd  oute  of  Town  re- 
turn'd  they  was  obliged  to  borrow  the  Chappie 
to  meet  in.  .  .  .  To  me  it  was  Agreeable  to  see 
former  Bigatree  so  far  gon  &  going  off,  and  God 
grant  that  for  Time  to  come  boath  Churchmen 
&  Desenters  may  live  in  peace  &  Love."  l 

Occasionally  a  diary  shows  us  the  innermost 
thoughts  of  a  profoundly  unhappy  woman. 
The  published  extracts  of  Miss  Rebecca  Dick- 
inson's journal,  for  instance,  give  us  some 
poignant  glimpses  into  the  corroding  loneli- 
ness of  a  hopeless  spinster.  Miss  Dickinson, 
familiarly  called  "  Aunt  Beck ",  was  a  seam- 
stress, who  traveled  from  house  to  house  in  the 
course  of  her  work  and  was  welcomed  every- 
where for  her  wit  and  her  gift  of  epigram.    But 

1  Deacon  Tudor's  diary,  p.  96. 


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302  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

there  is  nothing  sparkling  about  her  diary,  a  few 
extracts  of  which  follow: 

"  July  25,  1787,  makes  me  forty-nine  years 
of  age.  ...  I  do  wonder  at  myself  that  I 
should  be  so  earthly-minded  and  look  after  the 
things  of  the  world  as  though  I  should  be  the 
better  for  any  of  them  or  think  those  any  more 
happy  who  have  them.  .  .  ."  The  Sunday  fol- 
lowing she  reflects  upon  her  lonesomeness,  add- 
ing: "  God  only  knows  there  is  no  person  in  the 
world  who  loves  Company  more  than  me." 
The  Sunday  following  that,  she  spends  part  of 
the  night  wondering  "  how  it  come  about  that 
others  and  all  the  world  was  in  Possession  of 
Children  and  friends  and  a  hous  and  homes 
while  I  was  so  od  as  to  sit  here  alone."  A  wed- 
ding at  a  neighbor's  home  heightens  the  sting 
of  these  reflections. 

One  evening,  on  returning  home,  Aunt  Beck 
finds  her  house  so  dark  and  lonesome  that  she 
"walked  the  rooms"  and  "cryed"  herself 
"  sick."  "  Found  my  heart  very  stubborn,"  she 
records,  "  against  the  government  of  God  who 
has  set  me  here  for  to  try  my  fidelity  to  my  lord 
who  knows  the  best  way." 

Colic  and  pleurisy  add  to  her  trials.  And 
then  she  encounters  "  an  old  acquaintance  — 
was  in  Company  with  him  ten  years  agoe  he  has 
sense  very  well  married."  This  chance  meeting 
disturbs  her  greatly  —  by  reason  of  the  fact 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  303 

that  her  former  suitor  asks  her  "  if  her  name 
was  changed  "  —  and  sends  her  home  to  medi- 
tate further  on  her  lonely  state,  rebel  at  her 
fate,  and  finally  repent  of  her  wilfulness. 

Yet,  after  much  agony  of  soul,  Aunt  Beck 
evidently  decided,  as  many  another  single 
woman  has  done,  that  the  unmarried  state  has 
its  distinct  compensations.  For  we  find  her 
ending  her  book  on  "  the  8  day  of  August  1802  " 
with  the  reflection  that  though  she  is  now  in 
her  sixty-fifth  year,  "  never  did  the  goodness  of 
god  appeare  more  and  brighter."  ' 

One  of  the  most  delightful  diaries  that  has 
come  down  to  us  is  that  of  Anna  Green  Winslow, 
who  in  1770,  at  the  age  of  ten,  came  from  Nova 
Scotia,  where  her  father  was  then  stationed  with 
his  regiment,  to  be  "  finished  "  at  the  schools 
of  Boston.  She  lived  while  in  Boston  with  her 
father's  sister  (constantly  referred  to  in  the 
diary  as  "  Aunt  Deming  ")  in  Central  Court, 
which  led  out  of  Washington  Street,  just  south 
of  Summer  Street;  and  she  attended  the  Old 
South  Church.  Her  diary,  written  day  by  day 
to  be  sent  home  to  her  parents,  was  given  to  the 
world  in  1894  by  Alice  Morse  Earle  *  and, 
though  the  work  of  a  mere  child,  is  of  inesti- 
mable value  for  the  vivid  pictures  it  gives  us 

' "  History  of  Hatfield,"  by  D.  W.  and  R.  F.  Welfc.  F.  C.  H. 
Gibbons,  Springfield,   Massachusetts. 

)"  Diary  of  Anna  Green  Winslow:  "  Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Com- 
pany. 


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304  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

of  social  life  in  Puritan  Boston  just  before  the 
outbreak  of  the  Revolution. 

The  whimsical  little  maiden  who  wrote  this 
entertaining  journal  never  lived  to  have  chil- 
dren of  her  own.  Though  there  is  no  town  or 
church  record  of  her  death,  she  is  believed  to 
have  passed  away  at  Marshfield  in  the  fall  of 
1779,  very  likely  in  the  house  afterwards  occu- 
pied by  Daniel  Webster,  inasmuch  as  that  was 
the  family  home  of  the  Winslows  in  1775. 

One  of  the  early  entries  in  this  diary  is  on 
Anna's  twelfth  birthday,  November  29,  1771. 
On  this  occasion  she  had  a  party,  at  which  Lu- 
cinda,  her  aunt's  slave-girl,  was  "  principal  pi- 
per "t  as  the  four  couples  —  all  girls  —  enjoyed 
themselves  at  "  country  dansing,  danceing,  I 
mean."  Among  Anna's  entries  for  the  following 
month  is  the  following: 

"Deer  30th:  Yesterday  between  meetings 
my  aunt  was  call'd  to  Mrs.  Water's  &  about  8 
in  the  evening  Dr.  Lloyd  brought  little  master 
to  town  (N.  B.  As  a  memorandum  for  myself. 
My  aunt  stuck  a  white  sat  tan  pincushion  for 
Mrs.  Waters.  On  one  side  is  a  planthorn  with 
flowers,  on  the  reverse,  just  under  the  border 
are,  on  one  side  stuck  these  words,  Josiah 
Waters,  then  follows  on  the  end,  Deer  1771. 
on  the  next  side  &  end  are  the  words,  Welcome 
little  Stranger.)" 

Which,    being    interpreted,    means    that    in 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  305 

honor  of  the  birth  of  Josiah  Waters,  at  which 
Doctor  James  Lloyd,  the  famous  Tory  physi- 
cian, assisted,  Mrs.  Deming  presented  Mrs. 
Waters  with  a  white  silk  pincushion  stuck  around 
the  edge  with  pins.  Pins  were  then  highly 
valued  from  their  rarity.  A  single  paper  of 
pins  was  considered  a  lifelong  supply.  Stories 
are  told  of  mothers  who  brought  up  a  large 
family  on  four  rows;  and  grandmothers  were 
wont  to  exhibit  with  pride  the  "  great  pins  " 
that  had  formed  a  part  of  their  bridal  outfit. 
A  thorn  bush  supplied  the  early  substitute  for 
pins;  ladies,  elegantly  dressed  and  setting  out 
for  church,  plucked  from  the  bush  near  the 
front  door  a  thorn  or  two  with  which  to  fasten 
rebellious  laces. 

Anna,  not  being  an  Episcopalian,  had  not 
kept  Christmas  that  year,  but  she  records  in  her 
diary,  on  January  1, 1772,  that  she  has  received 
"  a  very  handsome  new  year's  gift  viz.  the  His- 
tory of  Joseph  Andrews  abreviated.  In  nice 
Guilt  and  flowers  covers."  This  "  Guilt  "  does 
not  refer  to  Joseph  Andrews's  well-known  lack 
of  morality  but  to  the  decoration  of  the  book- 
cover;  Anna's  "  History  ",  it  is  to  be  observed, 
was  "  abreviated,"  by  which,  we  hope,  expur- 
gated is  meant. 

A  very  striking  thing,  however,  about  this 
twelve-year-old  girl  is  that  she  is  quite  familiar 
with  evil  in  its  various  forms  as  well  as  with  the 


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306  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

crude  facts  of  life.  She  refers  without  any 
apparent  feeling  to  the  peccadilloes  and  punish- 
ments of  a  certain  Betty  Smith,  who  seems  to 
have  been  a  family  servant  at  one  time,  but 
who  "  when  the  29th  Regiment  encamp'd  upon 
the  common  took  herself  among  them  (as  the 
Irish  say)  &  there  she  stay'd  with  Bill  Pinchion 
&  awhile.  The  next  news  of  her  was  that  she 
was  got  into  gaol  for  stealing;  from  whence  she 
was  taken  to  the  publick  whipping  post." 

Familiarity  with  this  whipping-post  had  prob- 
ably made  little  Anna  dull  to  its  horrors.  It 
stood  at  this  time,  according  to  Samuel  Breck, 
"  conspicuously  and  prominently  in  the  most 
public  street  of  the  town  and  was  painted  red- 
It  was  placed  in  State  Street  directly  under  the 
windows  of  a  great  writing-school  which  I  fre- 
quented, and  from  them  the  scholars  were  in- 
dulged in  the  spectacle  of  all  kinds  of  punish- 
ment suited  to  harden  their  hearts  and  brutalize 
their  feelings.  Here  women  were  taken  in  a 
huge  cage,  in  which  they  were  dragged  on  wheels 
from  prison,  and  tied  to  the  post  with  bared 
backs  on  which  thirty  or  forty  lashes  were  be- 
stowed, among  the  screams  of  the  culprit  and 
uproar  of  the  mob.  A  little  further  in  the  street 
was  to  be  seen  the  pillory  with  three  or  four 
fellows  fastened  by  the  head  and  hands,  and 
standing  for  an  hour  in  that  helpless  posture, 
exposed  to  gross  and  cruel  jeers  from  the  multi- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  307 

tude,  who  pelted  them  incessantly  with  rotten 
eggs  and  every  repulsive  kind  of  garbage  that 
could  be  collected."  Inasmuch  as  little  Anna 
had  frequently  encountered  sights  such  as  these 
on  her  way  to  and  from  school,  it  is  perhaps  not 
so  odd  that  she  should  refer  unfeelingly  to  the 
case  of  Betty  Smith. 

Death  was  another  appalling  fact  of  life  with 
which  this  child  seems  to  have  been  early  made 
familiar.  In  speaking  of  the  "  departure  last 
week  "  of  Mr.  Stephen  March,  she  regrets  that 
she  has  not  heard  the  particulars  of  his  com- 
plication of  disorders  and  so  cannot  inform  her 
mother  "  whether  he  engag'd  the  King  of 
terrors  with  christian  fortitude,  or  otherwise. 

"  '  Stoop  down  my  Thoughts,  that  use  to  rise, 
Converse  a  while  with  Death; 
Think  how  a  gasping  Mortal  lies, 
And  pants  away  his  Breath.*  " 

We  certainly  should  not  expect  a  well-bred 
child  of  to-day  to  drop  thus  unfeelingly  into 
poetry  while  writing  to  her  family  of  the  death 
of  an  old  and  valued  friend. 

Anna  was  very  fond  of  rehearsing  the  sermons 
that  she  heard,  and,  inasmuch  as  it  was  her 
custom  to  attend  with  her  aunt  the  evening 
"  assembly,"  held  each  week  at  Mrs.  Rogers', 
before  which  one  of  the  ministers  of  the  Old 


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308  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

South  delivered  a  discourse,  we  have  many 
curious  abstracts  from  the  preaching  of  that 
day.  Thus  we  learn  that  "  Mr.  Bacon  .  .  . 
said  that  the  Son  of  God  always  did  as  his 
father  gave  him  commandment,  &  to  prove  this, 
he  said,  that  above  17  hundred  years  ago  he  left 
the  bosom  of  the  Father,  &  came  &  took  up  his 
abode  with  men,  &  bore  all  the  scourgings  & 
buffetings  which  the  vile  Jews  inflicted  on  him, 
&  then  was  hung  upon  the  accursed  tree  —  he 
died,  was  buried,  &  in  three  days  rose  again  — 
ascended  up  to  heaven  &  there  took  his  seat  at 
the  right  hand  of  Majesty  on  high  from  whence 
he  will  come  to  be  the  supream  and  impartial 
judge  of  quick  &  dead  —  and  when  his  poor 
Mother  &  her  poor  husband  went  to  Jerusalem 
to  keep  the  passover  &  he  went  with  them,  he 
disputed  among  the  doctors,  &  when  his  Mother 
ask'd  him  about  it  he  said  '  wist  ye  not  that  I 
must  be  about  my  father's  business,*  —  all  this 
he  said  was  a  part  of  that  wrighteousness  for 
the  sake  of  which  a  sinner  is  justafied  —  Aunt 
has  been  upstairs  all  the  time  I  have  been  write- 
ing  &  recollecting  this  —  so  no  help  from  her. 
She  is  come  down  now  &  I  have  been  reading 
this  over  to  her.  She  sais,  she  is  glad  I  remem- 
ber so  much,  but  I  have  not  done  the  subject 
justice.  She  sais  I  have  blended  things  some- 
what improperly.'* 
Anna  was  in  many  ways  a  real  child,  however, 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  309 

as  is  seen  in  her  frequent  and  very  proud  refer- 
ences to  her  Aunt  Storer,  who  lived  on  Sudbury 
Street,  where  she  particularly  enjoyed  visiting. 
Under  date  of  April  15, 1772,  we  read:  "  I  am 
going  to  Aunt  Storer 's  as  soon  as  writing  school 
is  done.  I  shall  dine  with  her,  if  she  is  not  en- 
gaged. It  is  a  long  time  since  I  was  there,  & 
indeed  it  is  a  long  time  since  I  have  been  able 
to  get  there.  For  though  the  walking  has  been 
pretty  tolerable  at  the  South  End  it  has  been 
intolerable  down  in  town.  ...  If  she  had 
wanted  much  to  have  seen  me  she  might  have 
sent  either  one  of  her  chaises,  her  chariot,  or 
her  babyhutt,  one  of  which  I  see  going  by  the 
door  almost  every  day. 

"  April  16.  —  I  dined  with  Aunt  Storer  yes- 
terday. My  cousin  Charles  Storer  lent  me 
Gulliver's  Travels  abreviated,  which  aunt  says 
I  may  read  for  the  sake  of  perfecting  myself 
in  reading  a  variety  of  composures,  she  sais 
farther  that  the  piece  was  desin'd  as  a  burlesque 
upon  the  times  in  which  it  was  wrote." 

This  "Aunt  Storer"  was  Mrs.  Ebenezer 
Storer,  the  sister  of  Anna's  mother.  Her  hus- 
band was  for  many  years  treasurer  of  Harvard 
College,  and  their  home  on  Sudbury  Street  was 
the  center  of  much  elegant  hospitality.  We  do 
not  wonder  as  we  read  of  the  rich  Persian  carpet 
of  her  drawing-room;  of  her  window-seat  with 
its  curtains  and  cushions  of  green  damask;   of 


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310  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

her  oval  mirrors  and  girandoles,  and  of  her 
dining-room  with  its  wide  chimney-piece  lined 
and  ornamented  with  Dutch  tiles,  that  Anna 
liked  to  visit  here. 

Aunt  Storer  was  a  person  of  much  elegance, 
as  her  beautiful  portrait  painted  by  Copley 
well  shows;  and  when  little  Anna  rebelled  at 
the  enormous  "  heddus,"  or  pompadour  roll, 
to  which  the  exigencies  of  fashion  had  con- 
demned her,  only  observed  that  it  "  ought  to 
be  made  less  ",  whereas  Aunt  Deming  declared 
with  emphasis  that  it  "  ought  not  to  be  made  at 
all!  "  "  It  makes  my  head  itch  &  ache,  &  burn 
like  anything  Mamma,"  writes  our  little  dia- 
rist of  this  same  roll.  "  When  it  first  came  home, 
aunt  put  it  on,  &  my  new  cap  on  it,  she  then 
took  up  her  apron  &  mesur'd  me,  and  from  the 
roots  of  my  hair  on  my  forehead  to  the  top  of 
my  notions,  I  mesur'd  above  an  inch  longer 
than  I  did  downwards  from  the  roots  of  my  hair 
to  the  end  of  my  chin.  Nothing  renders  a  young 
person  more  amiable  than  virtue  &  modesty 
without  the  help  of  false  hair."  Yet  poor  Anna 
had  to  keep  her  roll,  for  this  was  the  era  in 
which  head-dresses  were  all  of  extravagant 
height,  and  barbers  were  blithely  advertising, 
as  did  a  certain  Salemite,  that  he  would  "  attend 
the  polite  construction  of  rolls  to  raise  ladies* 
heads  to  any  pitch  desired." 

Mary   Osgood    Sumner,   who    was    mysteri- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  311 

ously  lost  at  sea  with  her  sister,  Ann,  and  an- 
other sister,  kept  her  child-diary  in  parallel 
columns  the  more  easily  to  contrast  her  sins 
of  omission  and  commission.  Thus,  under  the 
"  Black  Leaf  ",  we  read  of  such  dire  offenses  as 
leaving  her  "  staise "  on  the  bed  or  spilling 
coffee  on  the  table. 

This  is  not  a  long  nor  a  heinous  list.  Her 
entries  on  the  "  White  Leaf  "  are  much  more 
extended.  Like  many  another  of  us,  she  ap- 
pears to  have  enjoyed  her  virtues  more  than 
she  lamented  her  sins. 

Mary  Moody  Emerson  was  another  con- 
scientious  young  person  who  kept  a  diary  and 
recorded  therein  her  daily  endeavor  to  do  her 
duty  and  to  satisfy  at  the  same  time  the  hunger 
of  her  eager  young  mind: 

"  Rose  before  light  every  morn,"  she  writes, 
"  and  visited  from  necessity  once  and  again  for 
books;  read  Butler's  Analogy;  commented  on  the 
Scriptures;  read  in  a  little  book,  Cicero's  Let- 
ters, —  a  few;  touched  Shakespere,  washed, 
carded,  cleaned  house,  baked.  To-day  cannot 
recall  an  error,  nor  scarcely  a  sacrifice,  but  more 
fulness  of  content  in  the  labors  of  a  day  never 
was  felt.  There  is  a  sweet  pleasure  in  bending 
to  circumstances  while  superior  to  them."  This 
last  sentence  might  have  been  a  quotation, 
aforetime,  from  one  of  her  famous  nephew's 
essays;    Aunt  Mary,  even  when  a  girl,  had 


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312  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

much  of  the  wholesome  respect  for  life  as  it  is, 
which  characterizes  Emerson.  Her  journal 
is  very  different  in  tone  from  that  of  another 
young  student,  which  I  have  seen  in  manu- 
script, and  in  which,  day  after  day,  I  found 
recorded  only  the  single  word  "  Melancholy." 

Keeping  a  diary,  quite  often,  of  course,  pro- 
moted in  the  young  a  tendency  towards  morbid 
introspection.  But  it  did  not  inevitably  do  so. 
Stephen  Salisbury  of  Worcester,  whose  corre- 
spondence with  his  mother 1  supplies  us  with  a 
very  interesting  picture  of  college  life  at  Cam- 
bridge in  the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  appears  to  have  been  a  delightfully 
normal  youth.  Just  after  he  had  matriculated, 
at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  writes  home,  naively: 
"  I  should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would  send 
me  four  short  curtains,  such  as  I  have  no  doubt 
you  have  seen,  which  are  put  on  a  little  below 
the  middle  of  the  window  and  I  should  like  to 
have  them  made  with  rings  so  as  to  draw." 
A  few  days  later  he  refers  again  to  the  cur- 
tains. "  I  have  just  received  my  bundle  and 
was  much  disappointed  in  not  receiving  my 
curtains;  for  I  cannot  do  without  them  for 
when  we  are  dressing  nothing  hinders  people 
who  are  going  by  from  looking  in  upon  us;  not 
only  that  but  saucy  young  fellows,  going  by, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  313 

first  look  in  to  see  whether  there  are  those 
within  strong  enough  to  oppose  them  and  if  there 
are  not  they  strike  on  the  window  to  frighten 
us  and  almost  push  it  in  now  if  we  had  curtains 
they  would  not  know  how  large  we  were." 

The  fond  mother  at  home,  however,  still  does 
not  send  the  curtains.  Instead  she  counsels 
thus  with  her  son  concerning  them: 

"  Worcester  3d  Novr  1813 

"  My  dear  Child, 

"  You  are  still,  I  find,  very  desirous  of  having 
Curtains  to  your  Windows,  &  did  I  know  that 
you  would  be  accommodated  by  them  as  you 
expect,  I  would  indulge  you,  but  I  can  hardly 
suppose  it,  those  who  would  intrude  on  you 
at  improper  seasons  and  otherwise  behave  im- 
properly, would  still  do  so  tho'  you  had  curtains. 
Could  they  not  look  thr'o  or  over  them?  .  .  . 
I  wish,  my  dear,  that  you  should  always  be  in  a 
situation  to  be  seen  by  any  who  may  call,  which 
you  certainly  will  if  you  are  in  the  path  of  duty, 
do  not  I  entreat  you  let  triffiing  and  childish 
pursuits  take  your  time  and  attention  from 
your  studies,  and  so  be  obliged  to  get  your  lesson 
at  a  late  hour,  that  would  be  foolish  conduct  & 
I  hope  you  will  avoid  it.  I  hope  you  had  your 
Hair  Cut  some  of  these  fine  warm  days  we  have 
had,  &  that  you  dont  fail  to  comb  and  brush 
your  hair  ev'ry  day.    if  it  has  not  yet  been  cut 


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314  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

take  some  fine  day  and  do  not  have  it  cut  very 
short,  do  not  neglect  your  teeth,  if  you  do  they 
will  be  the  worse  for  what  has  been  done  to 
them,  clean  them  ev'ry  day  I  charge  you. 
keep  yourself  clean  &  neat,  it  is  not  incompatible 
with  your  duties,  nor  unbecoming  in  the  Scholar, 
be  assured. 

"  Your  affectionate  mother 

"  E.  Salisbury." 

Apparently  Stephen  needed  this  little  homily 
on  the  efficacy  of  the  tooth-brush  for  we  find 
him  complaining  constantly  of  toothache;  when 
he  is  half  through  his  first  year  at  college  his 
mother  writes:  "  Cannot  you,  my  dear,  collect 
courage  sufficient  to  have  the  worst  one  ex- 
tracted? "  Then  she  adds,  as  a  postscript  to  her 
letter:  "  Will  you  accept  of  a  little  Ginger- 
bread my  Son?  but  take  care  not  to  make  your 
poor  tooth  ache.  You  had  better  cut  but  little 
of  it  at  a  time."  For  though  gingerbread  seems 
to  us  of  to-day  a  childish  treat  for  a  Harvard 
student,  it  figured  largely  in  the  cash  account 
which  Stephen  sent  home.  Other  items  of  ex- 
penditure are: 

for  crape 25 

biscuit 02 

apples  to  teamster 25 

G.Bell 06 


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OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

Cuting  hair 18 

pears 02 

Cake 06 

chestnuts 12 

football 06 

Hoarhound  candy 12 

sealing  wax 12 

Oysters 07 

stages 50 


The  stage  from  Boston  to  Cambridge  ran 
twice  daily  at  this  time,  at  twelve  o'clock  and 
again  at  six.  But  freshmen  were  not  encouraged 
to  make  use  of  this  accommodation  more  than 
once  a  month  and  Stephen  is  sternly  questioned 
by  his  father  on  more  than  one  occasion  as  to 
why  he  went  again  to  Boston  "  so  soon  after 
you  left  it." 

The  trousers  of  this  student  were  a  great  care 
both  to  him  and  to  his  mother.  "  I  have  sent 
you  white  pantaloons,"  she  writes  towards  the 
end  of  his  freshman  year;  "  you  may  like  to 
wear  them  of  a  very  hot  Sabbath  with  your 
thin  Coat  &  white  socks,  if  you  wish  to  appear 
well  dressed  at  any  time  wear  white  socks  with 
your  Nankin  pantaloons.  I  would  not  have 
you  wear  those  blue  clouded  socks  in  to  Boston, 
keep  yourself  neat,  not  forgetting  the  soap  — 
comb  —  &  toothbrush." 

Then,  with  true  motherly  zeal,  she  sends  a 


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316  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

relay  of  pantaloons  unexpectedly,  only  to  re- 
ceive from  the  boy  in  Cambridge  this  troubled 
note:  "  I  was  very  sorry  to  see  two  pair  of  nan- 
kin pantaloons  for  I  dont  see  how  I  shall  man- 
age to  wear  them  all;  and  by  next  year  they 
will  be  so  small  that  I  shall  be  obliged  to  have 
,  them  peiced  and  you  know  how  I  dislike  that, 
it  looks  very  ill;  but  if  they  had  not  been  made 
until  next  year  they  would  have  been  fitted  for 
my  shape  and  I  have  enough  for  this  season  be- 
sides them." 

Wounded  maternal  love,  mixed  with  offended 
New  England  thrift,  speaks  in  the  reply  to  this: 
"  I  was  disappointed  that  my  present  to  you 
last  week,  of  2  pr  Nankin 'pantaloons,  were  not 
rec'd  with  gratitude  —  more  especially  as  they 
were  made  of  an  article  which  was  not  new, 
&  intended  merely  for  the  present  season  —  I 
hope  you  will  acknowledge  to  me  that  you 
have  found  them  very  comfortable."  He  did 
so  acknowledge,  of  course,  but  he  repeated  just 
the  same  his  fear  that  they  would  be  "  too  small 
for  next  season."  Stephen  had  evidently  suf- 
fered in  the  past  from  "  peiced  "  pantaloons. 

Of  a  new  gown  there  are  several  similar  men- 
tions. The  nature  of  this  article  is  defined  in 
the  College  Laws  of  1807  as  follows:  "  All  the 
undergraduates  shall  be  clothed  in  coats  of  blue 
grey,  or  of  dark  blue,  or  of  black.  And  no 
student  shall  appear  within  the  limits  of  the 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  317 

College  or  town  of  Cambridge  in  a  coat  of  any 
other  color,  unless  he  shall  have  on  a  night 
gown  '  or,  in  stormy  or  cold  weather,  an  outside 
garment  over  his  coat.  Nor  shall  a  surtout,  or 
any  outside  garment  of  any  other  color  than  a 
blue  grey,  or  dark  blue  or  black,  be  substituted 
for  the  uniform  coat.  But  the  Students  are 
permitted  to  wear  black  gowns,  in  which  they 
may  appear  on  all  public  occasions.  They  shall 
not  wear  gold  or  silver  lace,  cord  or  edging  upon 
their  hats,  waistcoats,  or  any  other  parts  of  their 
clothing." 

The  college  course  was  then  only  three  years 
long,  so  young  Salisbury  found  himself  a  junior 
when  he  returned  to  Cambridge  in  August, 
1813.  Immediately  he  joined  the  militia  with 
his  parents'  warm  approval,  and  he  also  regis- 
tered with  a  dancing  class.  "  We  approve  of 
your  attending  the  dancing  School,"  his  mother 
wrote,  "  only  be  very  careful  of  coming  out 
warm  into  the  Air.  it  will  not  I  trust  break  in 
upon  more  important  excercises — you  will  prob- 
ably want  a  pair  of  Dancing  pumps,  thick  Shoes 
will  not  be  proper  to  learn  in,  you  can  get  a  pair 
in  Boston,  but  do  not  go  hi  on  purpose,  once  a 
week  is  quite  often  enough  to  go  in  to  Boston." 

As  the  time  of  Stephen's  own  Commencement 
approaches,  we  learn  of  a  "  black  slk  gown 

1  The  reference  here  is  to  a  species  of  dressing-gown,  not  to  a 


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318 


SOCIAL    LIFE 


which  the  government  have   a 
dents  to  adopt  as  their  distin 
to  be  worn  only  on  public  occai 
again,  too,  the    inevitable  panl 
advised  me  to  get  thin  pants 
silk    ones    for    Commencement  — 
would  defer  it  till  I  wrote  you.      1   I 
grey  pantaloons,  you   know,   whicj 
handsome   and   this   summer  will 
that   I   shal  not  probably  have  tie* 
I    have    hardly    felt    a    desire    for 
so  that  if  you  please  I  should  rati 
any  this  season."     Mrs.  Salisbury 
quite  certain  that  the  summer  will  1 
strenuously  urges  a  pair  of  thin  panli 
Commencement.    Just  what  kind 
the  proud    senior   actually   did 
important  occasion  we  do  not  know . 
know  that  his  Commencement 
Conference,    which    three   others 
him,  "On  the  influence  of  the  pe 
condition  of  the  agriculturist,  the  l 
the  merchant,  and  the  profession 
Of    Stephen's    Commencement 
"  at  Mr.  Hearsey's  in  Cambridge  ", 
previous  chapter. 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HAVING  A   PICTURE  TAKEN 

THOUGH  the  Puritans  frowned  on  graven 
images  and  had  no  sympathy  with  art, 
as  we  understand  the  word,  they  were 
far  from  averse  to  endowing  posterity  with  their 
somewhat  forbidding  features;  scarcely  had  the 
first  century  of  pioneering  drawn  to  a  close 
when  the  leading  worthies  of  the  day  began  to 
have  their  portraits  painted.  Thus  we  have 
Cotton  Mather's  astonishingly  worldly  counte- 
nance, as  Peter  Pelham  painted  it;  Samuel 
Sewall's  personable  figure  has  been  preserved 
for  us  by  Smibert;  and  the  kindly  face  of  good 
Bishop  Berkeley  has  also  been  transmitted  to 
us,  as  seen  and  put  on  canvas  by  this  English 
painter,  who  was  his  friend. 

John  Smibert  journeyed  to  America  in  1728, 
intending  to  occupy  a  chair  in  Bishop  Berkeley's 
proposed  college  for  Indian  youth.  When  this 
project  turned  out  to  be  a  dream,  Smibert 
married  him  a  New  England  wife  and  stayed 
on  here  to  paint  the  portraits  of  well-known 
Americans.    That  it  was  not  then  infra  dig.  for 


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320 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


a  portrait  painter  to  turn  an  honest  penny  in 
any  way  that  he  could  may  be  seen  from  the 
following    advertisement,    which    I    copy    froi 
the  New  England  Weekly  Journal  of  Octol 
21,  1734: 

"  John   Smibert,   Painter;    Sells  all   sorts 
Colours,  dry  or  ground,  with  oils  and  brushes, 
fanns    of    several    sorts,    the    best    Mezzotinto, 
Italian,  French,  Dutch  and  English  Prints, 
Frames  and  Glasses  or  without,  by  wholesale 
Retale  at  reasonable  Rates;    at  his  House 
Queen-Street,  between  the  Town-House  and 
Orange  Tree,  Boston." 

Smibert  did  some  of  the  earliest  and  best  por 
traits  executed  in  America  before  the  Revo- 
lution, perhaps  his  most  successful  production 
being  his  portrait  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  His 
work  is  of  great  historical  value,  and  he  has 
every  right  to  first  mention  in  our  list  of  picture- 
makers  of  New  England. 

The  earliest  native  colonial  painter  with  ai 
claim  to  remembrance  to-day  was,  howevi 
Robert  Feke,  a  descendant  of  Henry  Feaki 
who  emigrated  to  Lynn,  Massachusetts,  in  1630, 
and  a  branch  of  whose  family  settled  at  Oyster 
Bay,  Long  Island.  From  this  place  the  future 
artist  came  to  Newport,  Rhode  Island.  But 
before  marrying  and  settling  down,  Feke  en- 
joyed some  wander-years  in  Spain,  the  influence 
of  which  is  to  be  seen  in  his  pictures;  his  work  is 


.  ine 

from 
ober 

»  of 
>hes, 
into, 

,,i„ 

leor 
e  in 
I  the 

or- 

iO- 

ion 
lis 
las 

z 

ke, 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  321 

far  less  hard  and  dry  than  that  of  Smibert,  with 
which  it  is  often  confused.  His  portraits  of 
Governor  and  Mrs.  Bowdoin,  in  the  possession 
of  Bowdoin  College,  are  still  fresh  and  natural 
in  coloring  and  are  also  good  in  drawing  and 
expression.  Feke  died  at  Bermuda,  whither  he 
had  gone  for  his  health,  at  the  early  age  of 
forty-four. 

Contemporary  with  Smibert  and  Robert  Feke 
was  Jonathan  B.  Blackburn,  whose  work  may 
be  found  on  the  walls  of  many  a  museum  and 
ancestral  home  of  New  England.  Blackburn 
came  to  Boston  the  year  before  Smibert  died, 
and  during  the  next  fifteen  years  executed  por- 
traits of 'more  than  fifty  well-known  New  Eng- 
landers  of  the  day.  Then  he  went  away  quite 
suddenly,  the  probable  reason  for  his  abrupt 
departure  being  that  he  could  not  stand  the 
competition  offered  by  the  work  of  John  Single- 
ton Copley,  the  greatest  of  our  native  portrait 
painters.  Copley  was  the  stepson  of  Peter 
Pelham,  who  was  himself  a  painter  and  en- 
graver of  considerable  talent.  Yet  the  young 
man  was  really  ajmost  entirely  self-taught,  and 
his  career  is,  therefore,  the  strongest  possible 
refutation  of  the  oft-repeated  fallacy  that  no 
good  work  can  be  expected  of  a  man  who  has 
not  had  the  benefit  of  "  art  atmosphere  ",  asso- 
ciation, that  is,  with  other  painters,  and  the 
opportunity  to  study  the  famous  pictures  of 


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322  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

the  world.  So  successful  was  he  and  so  generally 
did  the  great  folk  of  his  time  sit  to  him,  before 
he  left  New  England  in  1774,  that  the  mere 
possession  of  a  family  portrait  from  Copley's 
brush  has  long  been  held  to  be  a  kind  of  patent 
of  nobility  in  Massachusetts. 

Critics  have  pronounced  the  four  portraits  of 
the  Boylston  family,  which  hang  in  the  great 
dining-room  of  Harvard  Memorial  Hall  in 
Cambridge  the  best  examples  of  Copley's  por- 
trait work  and  have  declared  the  portrait  of 
Mrs.  Thomas  Boylston  the  high-water  mark  of 
his  art.  The  painting  of  the  artist's  family, 
however,  which  hangs  in  the  Boston  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts,  is  perhaps  the  most  impressive  canvas 
of  his  to  be  found  in  New  England  to-day,  and 
is  highly  interesting,  besides,  because  it  shows 
us  Copley  himself,  with  his  beautiful  wife,  his 
lovely  children,  and  his  dignified  father-in-law. 
One  feels  very  strongly  the  parent's  love  for  his 
cherished  children  as  well  as  the  artist's  pleas- 
ure in  good  subjects,  as  one  studies  the  quaint 
figure  of  the  little  girl  which  has  a  prominent 
place  in  the  front  of  this  group,  and  the  charm- 
ing picture  of  the  younger  child,  laughing  up 
into  its  mother's  face. 

Copley  may  well  have  painted  his  wife  and 
family  con  amore,  for  he  was  exceedingly  for- 
tunate in  the  marriage  he  had  made.  His  father 
had  died  the  year  of  his  birth,  —  which  occurred 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  323 

in  Boston  in  1737,  —  and  Peter  Pelham,  who 
had  married  Mrs.  Copley  when  John  was  nine 
years  old,  himself  passed  away  'two  years 
later.  So  that  this  lad  with  a  genius  for  paint- 
ing was  the  penniless  son  of  a  widow,  who  had 
to  support  herself  by  keeping  a  tobacco  shop! 
Fortunate,  indeed,  was  his  alliance,  in  1769, 
with  the  beautiful  daughter  of  Richard  Clarke, 
a  wealthy  merchant  who  was  the  Boston  agent 
for  the  East  India  Company. 

Already,  to  be  sure,  Copley  had  made  his 
place  as  an  artist.  His  "  Boy  and  The  Flying 
Squirrel ",  sent  anonymously  to  the  Royal 
Academy  when  he  was  twenty-three,  had  opened 
a  place  for  him  in  England  whenever  he  should 
decide  to  go  there.  For  the  present,  however, 
he  was  staying  on  in  Boston,  painting  portraits. 
It  was  as  much  a  matter  of  course  for  rich  New 
Englanders  to  have  their  wives  and  daughters 
painted  by  Copley  as  to  send  their  sons  to 
college.  During  the  twenty-year  period  that 
he  thus  worked  in  America,  nearly  three  hun- 
dred portraits  were  turned  out  in  his  studio! 

In  painting  women,  Copley  was  especially 
successful.  He  had  a  keen  feeling  for  beauty 
in  line,  color  and  texture,  and  the  women's 
dress  of  his  time  fed  this  taste.  Copley's  grand- 
daughter, Mrs.  M.  B.  Amory,  who  has  written 
a  capital  biography  of  him,  declares  that  he 
had  theory  and  principles  about  line  and  color, 


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324  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

which  he  carried  out  with  scrupulous  elaboration 
for  the  sake  of  heightening  the  charm  of  the 
picture.  "  The  rose,  the  jewel  in  the  hair,  the 
string  of  pearls  around  the  throat  were  no  acci- 
dental arrangement,"  she  writes,  "but  accord- 
ing to  principles  of  taste  which  he  thoroughly 
understood.  The  hair  ornamented  in  harmony 
with  the  full  dress  of  the  period ;  the  fall  of  lace 
shading  the  roundness  and  curve  of  the  arm, 
were  perhaps  unimportant  details  in  themselves, 
but  conduced  by  their  nice  adjustment  to  the 
harmonious  effect  of  the  composition.  Added 
to  these,  he  delighted  to  place  his  subject  among 
kindred  scenes:  sometimes  we  catch  a  glimpse, 
in  the  distance,  of  garden  or  mansion;  or  at 
others  of  the  fountain  and  the  grove,  the  squir- 
rel, that  favorite  of  his  brush,  the  bird  and 
the  spaniel  —  all  treated  with  equal  grace  and 
felicity." 

The  best  contemporary  glimpse  of  Copley, 
the  successful  painter  of  Boston's  dignitaries, 
has  been  provided  for  us  by  another  painter,  of 
whom  we  shall  soon  be  speaking,  Colonel  John 
Trumbull,  who,  while  a  student  at  Cambridge, 
was  taken  by  his  brother  to  call  at  the  artist's 
residence.  This  was  in  1772,  after  Copley  had 
obtained  possession  of  his  "  farm  "  on  Beacon 
Hill.  "  His  house,"  Trumbull  writes,  "  was  on 
the  Common  where  Mr.  Sears  elegant  grand 
palazzo  stands  [now  occupied  by  the  Somerset 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  325 

Club].  A  mutual  friend  of  Mr.  Copley  and  my 
brother,  Mr.  James  Lovell,  went  with  us  to 
introduce  us.  We  found  Mr.  Copley  dressed 
to  receive  a  party  of  friends  at  dinner.  I  re- 
member his  dress  and  appearance,  an  elegant- 
looking  man,  dressed  in/i  fine  maroon  cloth,  with 
gilt  buttons.  This  was  dazzling  to  my  unprac- 
ticed  eye.  But  his  paintings,  the  first  I  had 
ever  seen  deserving  the  name,  riveted,  absorbed 
my  attention,  and  renewed  all  my  desire  to 
enter  upon  such  a  pursuit." 

Copley  himself  had  never  seen  any  pictures 
at  the  time  he  did  some  of  the  portraits  which 
are  most  valued  in  New  England  to-day.  The 
painting  of  his  family,  to  be  sure,  he  did  after 
he  had  settled  down  to  live  in  England.  And 
it  was  then,  too,  that  he  did  the  Abigail  Brom- 
field,  which  so  realistically  gives  the  effect  of  a 
windy  day,  the  John  Adams  now  in  the  pos- 
session of  Harvard  College,  and  the  exquisite 
portrait  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  which  hangs 
in  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts.  But  the 
dignified  portrait  of  John  Hancock  and  the 
piquant  one  of  Dorothy,  his  wife,  both  of  which 
are  also  in  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts, 
are  very  good  examples  of  Copley's  early  work 
and  belong  to  the  period  before  he  left  Boston. 

Much  of  the  value  of  Copley's  portraits  we 
owe  to  the  infinite  pains  which  he  took.  He 
sadly  tried  the  patience  of  his  subjects  by  bis 


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326  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

minute  care  and  thorough  fidelity  in  the  execu- 
tion of  a  picture.  So  absorbed  was  he  in  the 
canvas  before  him  that  he  required  that  his 
sitter  should  always  bring  a  friend  to  keep  up 
the  flow  of  conversation  and  produce  the  ani- 
mation which  it  was  his  task  to  bring  out  in  line 
and  color.  No  persuasions,  no  complaints  of 
fatigue,  could  induce  him  to  slight  the  most 
unimportant  detail.  And  after  hours  of  patient 
attention,  the  unfortunate  sitter  would  often 
return  to  find  every  trace  of  the  preceding  day's 
work  obliterated,  and  the  faithful  artist  alertly 
ready  to  begin  his  task  all  over  again ! 

Gilbert  Stuart,  who  probably  ranks  next  to 
Copley  as  an  American  painter  of  portraits, 
was  also  New  England  born.  Unlike  Copley, 
however,  he  had  enjoyed  every  advantage  of 
study  and  travel  before  he  began  his  life-work. 
It  is  very  much  to  be  doubted  whether,  if  the 
conditions  of  Stuart's  life  had  been  like  those 
which  confronted  Copley,  he  would  ever  have 
attained  eminence  as  a  painter.  Still,  having 
made  the  human  head  his  sole  and  lifelong 
object  of  study,  he  was  able  to  produce  por- 
traits of  supreme  excellence.  Of  Washington 
alone  he  has  left  us  three  likenesses  of  the  first 
rank,  namely,  the  "  Athenaeum  "  portrait,  the 
"  Vaughan  "  portrait  and  the  "  Lansdowne  " 
portrait.  His  "  Athenaeum  "  portrait  is  held 
to  be  the  typical  Washington  and  perhaps  the 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  327 

bjest  work  he  ever  did;  but  the  spirited  paint- 
ing of  Washington's  friend,  General  Henry 
Knox,  as  he  stands  out,  vigorous  and  soldierly, 
in  the  canvas  at  the  Boston  Museum  of  Fine 
Arts,  should  be  given  high  rank  in  any  list  of 
this  artist's  work. 

Stuart  was  not  so  fortunate  as  Copley  in  the 
period  of  his  zenith,  though  he  was  far  more 
fortunate  in  early  opportunities.  Cosmo  Alex- 
ander, an  artist  over  here  on  a  visit,  had  seen 
some  of  the  Rhode  Island  lad's  early  work  and 
was  so  impressed  by  its  promise  that  he  took 
Stuart  back  to  England  with  him,  promising  to 
put  him  in  the  way  of  good  instruction  over 
there.  But  Alexander  died  as  soon  as  he  reached 
home,  and  his  protege  was  left  friendless  and 
penniless  in  a  strange  and  hostile  land.  After 
two  years  of  struggle  to  educate  himself  at  Glas- 
gow University,  Stuart  returned  to  America  in 
the  hope  of  being  able  to  support  himself  here 
as  a  painter.  But  the  rich  men  of  the  country 
did  not  feel  rich  just  then,  and  with  war  clouds 
looming  over  their  heads,  sitting  for  their  por- 
traits was  the  last  thing  they  had  heart  to 
undertake.  So  Stuart  again  sailed  for  Europe, 
taking  refuge  this  time  with  West,  that  excel- 
lent American  and  friend  of  all  rising  young 
artists.  West  taught  him  gladly  and  gave  him 
a  home  in  his  family.  In  ten  years  the  young 
American  was  able  to  set  up  a  studio  for  hiin- 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


- 


self  and  command  such  prices  as  no  one 
Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  then  charged. 

In  the  height  of  his  success,  however,  Stuart 
grew  suddenly  desirous  of  returning  to  his 
native  land  and,  abandoning  all  his  English 
friends,  he  sailed,  in  1792,  for  New  York.  Two 
years  there,  followed  by  a  sojourn  in  Philadel- 
phia and  another  in  Washington,  intervened 
before  he  came  back  to  New  England.  Then 
he  settled  down  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life 
in  Boston.  For  many  years  his  home  and 
painting-room  was  in  Washington  Place,  Fort 
Hill,  where  his  geniality  and  charm  as  a  conver- 
sationalist drew  many  sitters,  all  of  whom  soon 
assumed  in  his  presence  their  most  characteris- 
tic expressions  and  so  met  half-way  the  artist's 
determination  to  get  a  faithful  portrait.  Gil- 
bert Stuart  was  a  great  physiognomist.  He 
could  read  a  man's  character  almost  from  a 
glance  at  his  face.  When  Talleyrand  was  in 
Boston,  he  went  to  call  at  the  artist's  studio; 
after  the  wily  Frenchman  had  withdrawn, 
Stuart  observed  to  a  friend,  "  If  that  man  is 
not  a  villain  the  Almighty  does  not  write  a 
legible  hand."  Events  proved  that  the  artist 
had  read  aright  the  meaning  of  Talleyrand's 
evil  face.  Stuart  used  to  say  of  his  work  that 
portrait  painting,  as  he  conceived  it,  was  "  copy- 
ing the  works  of  God  and  leaving  clothes  to  the 
tailors  and  mantua-makers."     Stuart  had  the 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  329 

gift  of  pungent  expression  and  of  quick  wit. 
When  he  met  Samuel  Johnson  in  Europe,  and 
that  personage,  after  expressing  great  aston- 
ishment that  the  American  did  not  look  more 
like  a  red  Indian,  inquired  solicitously  where 
he  had  learned  English,  Stuart  flashed  back: 
"  Not  from  your  dictionary." 

A  contemporary  of  Stuart's  was  Trumbull, 
whose  account  of  a  visit  to  Copley's  studio  was 
quoted  above.  Trumbull,  like  Stuart,  studied 
in  England  with  West.  But  before  enjoying 
this  opportunity  to  cultivate  the  art  of  his 
choice,  he  had  been  successively  a  schoolmaster, 
a  Revolutionary  officer,  and  a  man  of  business 
in  Paris.  It  was  Franklin,  whom  he  met  in  the 
French  capital,  who  gave  him  a  letter  to  West. 
On  the  arrival  in  London  of  the  news  of  Andre's 
,  execution,  Trumbull,  because  he  was  the  son 
of  the  Revolutionary  governor  of  Connecticut  * 
and  had  been  aide-de-camp  to  Washington,  fell 
under  suspicion  as  a  spy  and  was  thrust  into 
prison.  At  the  end  of  eight  months,  he  was 
released,  but  only  through  the  potent  influence 
of  West.  West  believed  that  Trumbull  would 
win  his  greatest  success  as  a  painter  of  historical 
scenes,  and  it  was  in  the  studio  of  the  Quaker 
that  "  Bunker's  Hill "  and  the  "  Death  of 
Montgomery"  were  both  painted.    Sir  Joshua 

i  Trumbull's  mother  was  the  great-granddaughter  of  John  Rob- 
inson, who  led  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  out  of  England  and  was  their 
pastor  until  they  sailed  from  Holland  for  the  New  World. 


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330  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Reynolds,  seeing  the  latter  canvas  there,  ad- 
mired it  extremely  and  congratulated  West  on 
his  improvement  in  color;  he  was  not  at  all 
pleased  when  told  that  the  work  had  been  done 
by  Trumbull,  one  of  whose  portraits  he  had 
recently  dismissed  with  the  peevish  criticism 
that  the  coat  in  it  looked  "  like  bent  tin." 

The  various  personages  in  Trumbull's  famous 
'  Declaration  of  Independence  "  were  all  por- 
traits, for  though  the  work  was  started  while 
the  painter  was  staying  with  Jefferson  in  Paris, 
years  were  spent  in  making  the  faces  in  the 
picture  faithful  to  their  distinguished  originals. 
"  Mr.  Hancock  and  Samuel  Adams,"  writes 
Trumbull,  "were  painted  in  Boston;  Mr. 
Bartlett  at  Exeter,  New  Hampshire,  etc." 
Yet  the  patriotic  portrait  by  which  this  artist 
is  best  remembered  to-day  is  of  a  man  who  was 
not  of  the  Signers'  group  —  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton. This  very  brilliant  and  beautiful  work  is 
now  in  the  Yale  University  School  of  Fine  Arts, 
which  has  a  rich  collection  of  Trumbull's  work. 

The  arrangement  by  which  these  pictures 
came  to  Yale  is  highly  creditable  to  both  parties 
concerned  in  that  it  made  a  dignified  and  com- 
fortable old  age  possible  for  the  artist  and 
brought  to  Yale  treasures  which  will  steadily 
increase  in  value  with  the  passing  of  the  years. 
In  return  for  an  annuity  of  one  thousand  dol- 
lars to  be  paid  to  Trumbull  by  Yale  in  quarterly 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  331 

installments  from  1837  until  his  death,  his 
paintings  were  there  assembled  in  what  was 
known  as  the  Trumbull  Gallery.  And  when 
the  artist  passed  away,  he  and  his  wife  were 
buried  on  the  Yale  campus,  close  to  the  work 
to  which  he  had  given  his  life.  Trumbull's 
wife  was  a  very  great  beauty,  as  her  husband's 
portrait  of  her,  which  is  also  at  Yale,  clearly 
shows.  This  portrait  is  almost  her  only  history. 
But  though  "  her  early  name  and  lineage  were 
never  divulged  ",  we  know  to-day  that  she  was 
an  Englishwoman,  the  daughter  of  Sir  John 
Hope.  Many  are  the  stories  told  of  her  eccen- 
tricities and  of  the  occasions  when  she  was  over- 
come "  by  something  stronger  than  tea."  But 
her  husband's  tribute  to  her  is  all  that  we  need 
to  quote  here: 

"  In  April,  1824, 1  had  the  misfortune  to  lose 
my  wife,  who  had  been  the  faithful  and  beloved 
companion  of  all  the  vicissitudes  of  twenty-four 
years.  She  was  the  perfect  personification  of 
truth  and  sincerity,  —  wise  to  counsel,  kind  to 
console,  by  far  the  more  important  and  better 
half  of  me,  and  with  all,  beautiful  beyond  the 
usual  beauty  of  women." 

These  words  we  may  well  believe,  as  we  gaze 
at  the  exquisite  portrait,  which  was  the  artist's 
memorial  to  his  lost  love.  For  daintiness  is 
written  all  over  these  delicate  features  and  this 
rose-leaf  skin,  while  the  fluffy  locks,  which  peep 


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S32  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

out  from  under  the  enchanting  cap,  and  the 
evanescent  smile  on  a  very  sweet  mouth  all 
show  Mrs.  Trumbull  to  have  been  a  woman  of 
much  charm  — 'as  well  as  of  great  beauty. 

Washington  Allston,  who  was  a  friend  of 
Stuart's  and  who,  though  born  in  South  Caro- 
lina, passed  the  greater  part  of  his  professional 
life  in  Boston  and  Cambridge,  was  another 
artist  renowned  in  the  New  England  of  his  day 
though  his  fame  was  at  no  time  due  to  his  suc- 
cess as  a  portrait  painter. 

A  very  dear  friend  of  Allston's  was  Edward 
G.  Malbone,  painter  of  miniatures.  James 
Peale  was  an  early  artist  in  this  field,  and  an 
Irish  gentleman  named  Ramage  executed  many 
small  likenesses  in  Boston  in  1771.  But  Mal- 
bone, who  was  born  in  Newport,  Rhode  Island, 
in  1777,  easily  outstripped  them  all  and  at  the 
early  age  of  seventeen  was  successfully  executing  ■ 
miniatures  in  Providence.  The  spring  of  1796 
saw  him  fairly  established  as  a  miniature  painter 
in  Boston,  after  which  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
and  Charleston  were,  in  turn,  his  homes.  From 
the  Southern  city  he  sailed,  for  the  sake  of  his 
never-rugged  health,  to  Europe,  accompanied 
by  Allston;  and  West  was  very  anxious  that  he 
should  settle  in  London.  But  Malbone  was  a 
devout  American  and  was  resolved  that,  even  if 
his  span  proved  to  be  a  short  one,  he  would  pass 
it  in  the  land  of  his  birth;    he  died  in  May, 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  333 

1807.  Yet  Malbonc  has  left  behind  him  work 
so  exquisite  that  his  name  will  never  cease  to 
occupy  a  high  place  among  the  great  artists  of 
America.  "  He  had  the  happy  talent,"  Allston 
wrote  of  him,  "  of  elevating  the  character  with- 
out impairing  the  likeness."  Remarkable  as 
this  was  in  his  miniatures  of  men,  it  was  still 
more  to  be  noted  in  the  women  he  painted. 
"  No  woman  ever  lost  any  beauty  from  his 
hand;  the  fair  would  become  still  fairer  under 
his  pencil."  His  miniature  of  Mrs.  Richard 
Derby  of  Boston,  herewith  reproduced,  bears 
this  out,  I  think. 

Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  much  better  known  as 
the  inventor  of  the  electric  telegraph  than  as  a 
painter,  —  though  he  did  some  portraits  which 
are  very  creditable  likenesses,  —  Francis  Alex- 
ander, and  Chester  Harding  are  other  New 
Englanders  who  were  prolific  portrait  painters 
in  the  early  nineteenth  century.  Alexander, 
born  in  Windham  County,  Connecticut,  in 
February,  1800,  started  out  in  life  as  a  school- 
master, and  while  free  of  routine  duties  for  a  few 
days,  —  because  of  some  slight  indisposition,  — 
attempted  to  reproduce  in  water-color  the  evan- 
escent colors  of  some  fish  he  had  caught.  His 
mother  encouraged  him,  and  Trumbull  lent  him 
heads  to  copy.  Then,  with  infinite  difficulty,  he 
scraped  together  money  enough  to  go  to  New 
York  for  a  short  period  of  study,  after  which  he 


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334 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


1 


set  up  as  a  professional  painter.  A  commission 
came  to  him  to  paint  a  family  at  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  and  when  this  had  been  success- 
fully executed,  he  went  to  Boston,  where  his 
work  was  soon  in  great  demand  by  reason  of  its 
intelligence  and  sensibility. 

Great  as  was  Alexander's  vogue,  it  paled,  hi 
ever,  before  that  of  Chester  Harding,  a  self- 
taught  New  Englander,  who,  in  1823,  became 
so  much  the  fashion  that  even  Stuart  was 
neglected  and  used  to  ask  sarcastically :  "  How 
goes  the  Harding  fever?  "  Harding  was  boi 
in  1792,  in  the  little  mountain  village  of  Conway, 
Massachusetts,  of  a  family  so  poor  that  at  the 
age  of  twelve  he  "  hired  out "  to  a  farmer  in  a 
near-by  town  for  the  modest  sum  of  six  dollars 
a  month.  When  Chester  was  fourteen,  the 
family  emigrated  to  Western  New  York,  and 
very  fascinating  is  the  story  '  of  this  promising 
lad's  subsequent  rise  to  fame  and  fortune.  Few 
were  the  eminent  men  of  the  United  States  that 
Harding  did  not  put  on  canvas  during  the  first 
thirty  years  of  his  career;  and  in  London, 
well,  he  made  likenesses  of  many  great  per- 
sonages of  the  day,  including  the  poet  Rogers. 
Harding  was  a  most  buoyant  personality,  with 
a  delightful  sense  of  humor.  He  was  always 
especially  delighted  at  the  story  of  a  lady  who 


i  its 
ow- 

-H- 

ne 
as 
>w 
rn 
.v. 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  335 

had  recently  died  and  whose  pet  cat  had  for 
several  days  been  wandering  dejectedly  about 
the  house  in  search  of  something  which  she 
missed.  At  last  she  entered  a  room  where  a 
Harding  likeness  of  her  late  mistress  was  stand- 
ing on  a  sofa.  The  creature  at  once  gave  a 
bound  and  tried  to  settle  herself  in  her  accus- 
tomed place  on  the  old  lady's  lap. 

When  the  artist  returned  to  New  England 
from  his  sojourn  abroad,  the  first  picture  that 
he  painted  was  that  of  Emily  Marshall,  then 
the  reigning  beauty  of  Boston.  He  declares 
that  he  did  not  succeed  to  his  own  satisfaction 
in  the  resulting  portrait,  and  it  is  certainly  hard 
to  understand,  from  this  sole  record  of  the 
great  beauty,  why  workingmen  should  have 
been  willing  to  forego  their  noonday  meal 
merely  to  look  upon  her  face.  Harding's  por- 
traits of  Webster  and  many  other  celebrities 
were  very  highly  esteemed  in  his  day  and  are 
still  interesting  as  likenesses.  But  the  man  was 
far  greater  than  his  painting,  I  take  it;  it  was 
undoubtedly  to  his  simple,  frank,  social  nature 
rather  than  to  his  power  as  an  artist  that  he 
owed  his  astonishing  success. 

Other  popular  portrait  painters  of  old  New 
England  were  John  Hazlitt,  who  executed  many 
likenesses  in  Hingham,  soon  after  the  Revolu- 
tion; Ralph  Earle,  who  painted  many  Con- 
necticut  people    in   something  of  the  Copley 


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336  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

manner;  and  Joseph  Ames,  who  is  associate 
with  many  pictures  of  Webster. 

G.  P.  A.  Healy,  who  was  born  in  1807  i 
lived  to  be  nearly  ninety,  was  a  prolific  painter 
of  New  England  people.  Among  those  who  sat 
to  him  were  Longfellow,  Webster,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  and  Mrs.  Harrison  Gray  Otis.  His 
immense  historical  picture,  "  Webster  replying 
to  Hayne,"  which  hangs  in  Eaneuil  Hall,  Boston, 
contains  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  thirty 
portraits. 

Portrait  painters,  then  as  now,  were  for  the 
rich  and  great,  however.  Most  of  us  would 
never  leave  any  counterfeit  presentment  behind 
for  our  sorrowing  friends  if  we  had  to  depend 
on  portrait  painters  to  preserve  our  features. 
And  this  is  the  very  reason  why  we  have  ! 
few  likenesses,  save  of  the  well-to-do, 
before  the  days  of  the  miniature,  the  silhouetU 
the  wax  portrait,  and  the  daguerreotype.  Ma: 
bone  made  miniatures  for  fifty  dollars;  daguerr 
otypes  could  be  had  for  about  three  dolla: 
apiece.  The  middle  ground,  both  from 
point  of  view  of  art  and  of  expense,  Was  occupies 
by  the  wax  portrait,  that  interesting  and  elusiv 
likeness  modeled  in  relief,  about  which  Mrs 
Charles  K.  Bolton  has  recently  written  so  de- 
lightfully '    and    of    which    the    Oliver    Holdei 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  337 

portrait,  herewith  reproduced,  furnishes  an  ex- 
cellent example. 

The  beginnings  of  wax  modeling  as  an  art 
are  lost  in  a  past  which  is  beyond  history,  but 
those  desirous  of  learning  all  that  may  be  known 
on  this  subject  are  referred  to  Mrs.  Bolton's 
interesting  brochure.  For  our  purposes  it  will 
suffice  just  to  touch  here  on  the  fact  that 
Patience  Lovell  Wright,  an  American  of  Quaker 
descent,  modeled  portrait  heads  in  wax,  when 
left  a  widow  in  1769,  and  acquitted  herself  with 
so  much  skill  that  Horace  Walpole  deigned  to 
bestow  high  praise  on  her  portraits  of  the  Eng- 
lish aristocracy.  Her  full-length  portrait  of 
Lord  Chatham  in  his  official  robes  was  accorded 
the  further  honor  of  a  place  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  To-day  Patience  Wright  is  referred  to 
by  experts  who  are  also  historians  as  our  second 
American  artist. 

Following  Mrs.  Wright,  though  evidently 
some  distance  behind,  was  John  Christian 
Rauschner,  a  Dane,  who  modeled  a  number  of 
Salem  people  (about  1810)  and  who  executed 
also  our  Oliver  Holden,  now  owned  by  Frank 
J.  Lawton,  of  Shirley,  Massachusetts.  The 
wax  in  this  portrait,  as  in  all  the  portraits  made 
by  Rauschner,  is  colored  all  the  way  through, 
only  the  small  parts,  fike  eyes,  eyebrows,  and 
shadows  being  painted  in.  Rauschner's  work 
is  in  lower  relief  than  Mrs.  Wright's  and  shows 


Digitized  Dy  GOOgle 


338  SOCIAL    LIFE   IN 

somewhat  less  skill  in  handling  the  facial 
muscles.  "  Nevertheless  his  portraits  are  fas- 
cinating, and  call  us  back,"  as  Mrs.  Bolton  well 
says,  "  to  a  time  that  is  gone.  The  ladies  are 
all  so  genteel  in  their  dotted  muslin  gowns,  their 
hair  done  up  with  combs  or  covered  with  queer 
mobcaps.  And  each  lady  has  some  favorite 
ring  or  brooch  in  facsimile  upon  her  finger  or 
in  her  dress.  Curls  are  there  in  infinite  variety, 
coyly  hanging  before  the  ear  or  more  obviously 
upon  the  forehead.  The  gentlemen,  too,  are 
bedight  in  their  best,  with  their  black  or  brown 
coat  and  stock.  Some  wore  frills  and  some  wore 
neck-cloths  with  long  ends."  Oliver  Holden's 
mobile  face,  with  its  deep  dimples,  looks  out 
over  a  trimly  fitted  stock.  It  is  easier  to  con- 
nect this  face  with  the  titled  Irishman  who  was 
Holden's  kin  than  with  Coronation. 

Another  modeler  in  wax,  who  did  portraits 
of  many  New  England  people,  was  Robert  Ball 
Hughes,  who  was  born  in  London  in  1806  but 
lived  most  of  his  life  in  Dorchester,  Massachu- 
setts. Hughes's  reliefs  were  all  modeled  in 
white  wax,  and  he  worked  for  many  years  to 
find  a  formula  by  means  of  which  he  could  pro- 
duce a  composition  evenly  and  permanently 
white.  In  his  quest  he  was  successful,  but  died 
with  his  secret  still  untold.  His  portraits  are  all 
very  delicately  modeled,  a  particularly  beauti- 
ful example  of  his  best  work  being  the  portrait 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  339 

of  Mrs.  Mary  Miller  Quincy,  wife  of  the  second 
Mayor  Quincy  of  Boston,  now  in  the  possession 
of  Mrs.  Mary  Quincy  Thomdike  of  Boston. 

Practically  contemporaneous  with  the  wax 
portrait  was  the  silhouette,  which  used  to  be  ex- 
changed among  friends  early  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  very  much  as  photographs  are  to-day. 
The  silhouette  has  been  called  the  poor  relation 
of  the  miniature  and  the  forerunner  of  the 
daguerreotype.  Black  profile  portraiture,  at 
its  best,  and  as  practised  in  Europe,  was  a  thing 
of  real  beauty,  —  almost  worthy  to  take  its  place 
with  the  best  miniature  painting.  At  its  worst, 
"  paper  cutting "  was  a  quaintly  appealing 
handicraft  interesting  to  the  social  historian 
because  of  the  side-lights  it  throws  on  men  and 
manners  of  a  vanished  day. 

Strange  confusion  has  arisen  in  the  mind*  nf 
many  admirers  of  silhouettes  on  account  of 
the  name.  Black  profile  portraiture  wnn  prac- 
tised in  Europe  long  before  Etieniir  dr  Mil 
houette  economized  in  the  public  Hikhht  tin 
partment  of  Louis  XV,  cut  |H>rlrnil<»  of  Ilia 
friends  for  a  pastime,  and  no  c.mmv\  llir  nil*  nf 
the  day  to  call  by  his  name  wliatevi-r  whu  r>ln>it|f 
and  common.  For  of  eourw  Miffw  |im|«*i-  pit! 
traits  were  very  cheap  crtnpnrfd  hi  »  |wlnllHjt 
on  canvas,  a  delicate  mininlmr  nt  pvmi  (lie  i-mmi 
paratively  low-priced  w«*  |«*Hhtlh.  "  'Hit* 
days  of  fustian  and  the  frmMnHnt  wert«  i-cHilMtf  f 


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340  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

paper  portraits  instead  of  painting;  then  thi 
apothecary  picture-man,  as  Ruskin  calls  th< 
photographer  Daguerre."  * 

Originating  in  France,  and  flourishing  greatly 
in  Germany  at  the  period  when  Goethe  and  hi: 
friends  were  making  literature  and  history  a< 
the  Court  of  Weimar,  the  silhouette  sooi 
reached  England  and  penetrated  through  roy 
alty  and  the  nobility  to  the  middle  and  thei 
to  the  lower  classes.  It  is  curious  to  think  ol 
George  III,  that  ogre  of  New  England,  sitting 
for  a  scissors  portrait  to  his  daughter,  th< 
Princess  Elizabeth;  and  it  is  a  far  cry  from  th( 
silhouette  as  a  diversion  for  royalty  to  th< 
itinerant  artist  thus  delightfully  described  bj 
Sam  Weller  in  the  inimitable  letter  to  Mary: 

"  So  I  take  the  privilege  of  the  day,  Mary 
my  dear,  —  as  the  genTm'n  in  difficulties  die 
ven  he  valked  out  of  a  Sunday  —  to  tell  yoi 
that,  the  first  and  only  time  I  see  you,  you] 
likeness  was  took  on  my  hart  in  much  quickei 
time  and  brighter  colours  than  ever  a  likenes) 
was  took  by  the  profeel  macheen  (wich  p'raps 
you  may  have  heerd  on,  Mary,  my  dear) 
altho'  it  does  finish  a  portrait  and  put  the  frami 
and  glass  on  complete,  with  a  hook  on  the  enc 
to  hang  it  up  by,  and  all  in  two  minutes  and  e 
quarter." 

Mrs.  Bolton  cleverly  observes  that  in  Eng 

1 "  History  of  Silhouettes,"  by  E.  Nevill  Jackson. 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  341 

land,  professional  silhouetting,  at  any  rate, 
started  with  Mrs.  Pyburg,  who  made  black 
paper  portraits  of  King  William  and  Queen 
Mary.  "  After  reading  English  books  upon 
silhouettes,  you  feel  that  you  should  as  soon 
forget  your  mother's  name,  or  the  date  of  the 
Battle  of  Hastings,  as  forget  Mrs.  Pyburg. 
She  began  things,  she  is  like  Adam  and  Eve; 
and  after  Mrs.  Pyburg,  nothing,  until  in  the 
early  nineteenth  century  England  began  to 
send  us  here  in  America  her  prodigies." 

One  silhouettist  from  England  who  made  a 
great  success  in  America  was  Master  Hubard, 
so  called  from  the  fact  that  he  began  the  prac- 
tice of  his  profession  at  the  early  age  of  twelve. 
When  he  was  seventeen,  he  landed  in  New  York, 
and  for  many  years  itinerated  in  the  United 
States,  making  silhouettes  at  a  cost  of  fifty 
cents  apiece.  While  in  Boston,  Hubard  worked 
at  the  Exchange  Coffee  House,  cutting  full- 
length  portraits  by  hand  in  twenty  seconds. 
Mr.  Joye  and  Mr.  Bache  were  other  silhouettists 
who  practised  their  art  in  New  England,  but 
the  true  successor  of  Master  Hubard  was  un- 
doubtedly Master  Hanks,  whom  we  find  ad- 
vertised in  1828  as  "  capable  of  delineating 
every  object  in  nature  and  art  with  extraordinary 
correctness." 

A  silhouettist  of  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, who  was  of  real  New  England  stock,  was 


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342  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

William  M.  S.  Doyle,  who,  in  December,  1811, 
advertised  ■  as  follows: 

Wm  M.  S.  DOYLE 

Miniature  and  Profile  Painter 

Tremont  Street,  Boston,  next  House  north  of  the 
Stone-Chapel,  the  late  residence  of  R.  G.  Amory, 
esq.  Continues  to  execute  Likenesses  in  Miniature 
and  Profile  of  various  sizes  (the  latter  in  shade  or 
natural  colours)  in  a  style  peculiarly  striking  and 
elegant,  whereby  the  most  forcible  animation  is 
obtained. 

Some  are  finished  on  composition,  in  the  manner 
of  the  celebrated  Miers,  of  Li/ndon. 
'.'Prices  of  Profiles — from  So  cents  to  1,  S  &  5 

dollars. 
Miniatures  —  IS,  15,  18  and  SO  dollars. 

One  of  Doyle's  cuttings,  while  in  Boston,  was 
of  Bishop  Cheverus,  Boston's  Roman  Catholic 
prelate  of  fragrant  and  gracious  memory.  Doyle 
is  particularly  interesting  as  the  only  Boston 
silhouettist  of  any  note  and  because  he  was 
the  partner  of  Daniel  Bowen,  who,  in  1791,  es- 
tablished a  museum  opposite  the  Bunch  of 
Grapes  Tavern  on  State  Street.  In  1795,  Bowen 
and  Doyle  were  at  the  corner  of  Brorafield  and 
Tremont  Streets.  But  here  they  were  visited 
by  fire  in  1803  and  again  in  1807. 

Mi™  H.  C. 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  343 

William  King,  another  American  silhouettist, 
thus  advertises  his  art  in  the  New  Hampshire 
Gazette  of  Tuesday,  October  22,  1805:  "Will- 
iam King,  taker  of  Profile  likenesses,  respect- 
fully informs  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  Ports- 
mouth that  he  will  take  a  room  at  Col.  Wood- 
ward's on  Wednesday  next,  and  will  stay  ten 
days  only  to  take  profile  likenesses.  His  price 
for  two  profiles  of  one  person  is  twenty-five 
cents,  and  frames  them  in  a  handsome  manner 
with  black  glass  in  elegant  oval,  round,  or 
square  frames,  gilt  or  black.  Price  from  fifty 
cents  to  two  dollars  each."  Silhouettes  at 
the  rate  of  two  for  a  quarter  would  seem  to  be 
within  the  reach  of  pretty  much  anybody  who 
wanted  to  have  a  picture  taken.  It  was  high 
time  for  Edouart  to  come  over  from  England 
and  raise  the  standard  of  this  curious  and  in- 
teresting art! 

Black  paper  pictures  were  called  silhouettes 
first  in  England,  —  and  by  the  Frenchman  chiefly 
responsible  for  their  great  vogue  there  and  in 
America,  Auguste  Edouart.  Edouart  had  been 
obliged  to  leave  France  for  political  reasons 
and,  having  lost  nearly  all  his  property  in  Hol- 
land (in  1813),  found  himself  in  England  with 
scarcely  any  money  and  so  advertised  that  he 
would  give  French  lessons.  This  not  proving  a 
satisfactory  source  of  income,  he  began  to  make 
portraits  out  of  human  hair,  proceeding  from 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


this  to  cut  profiles  by  hand  as  a  form  of  protest 
against  the  disrepute  into  which  this  work  had 
fallen  by  the  introduction  of  mechanical  de- 
vices. His  portraits  were  almost  always  cut 
in  full  length,  because  he  believed  that  this  was 
the  only  way  to  make  an  accurate  likeness,  and 
he  was  quite  successful  in  catching  character- 
istic poses  and  gestures.  It  was  his  habit  in  the 
British  Isles  to  travel  from  one  town  to  another 
in  the  practice  of  his  profession  and  once,  at 
Edinburgh,  he  made  no  less  than  six  hundred 
likenesses  in  a  fortnight.  In  1835  he  wrote  i 
book  which  he  called  "  Silhouette  Likenesses." 
Edouart  kept  a  careful  record  of  the  people 
whose  profiles  he  perpetuated,  and  he  had  a  very 
high  sense  of  personal  honor  in  the  matter  of 
guarding  the  features  committed  to  his  care. 
"  Ladies  are  never  exhibited,"  he  advertised, 
"  nor  duplicates  of  their  likenesses  either  sold 
or  delivered  to  anyone  but  themselves  or  by 
their  special  order." 

In  1839,  taking  with  him  his  volumes  of 
English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  portraits  for  pur- 
poses of  exhibition,  this  interesting  artist  sailed 
for  America,  where  he  stayed  for  ten  years, 
making  innumerable  portraits  in  New  York, 
Saratoga,  Philadelphia,  Norwich,  and  Boston, 
as  well  as  in  many  cities  of  the  south.  In  Cam- 
bridge he  cut  Longfellow,  the  Appleton  family, 
the  president  of  Harvard,  and  dozens  of  pro- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  345 

fessors  and  students  of  the  college,  while  in 
Boston  he  made  a  shadow  picture,  against  his 
own  home  background,  of  the  Reverend  John 
Pierpont  and  family  as  well  as  of  several  other 
well-known  people. 

Many  of  the  portraits  which  Edouart  did 
while  in  America  were  sunk  in  the  shipwreck 
which  he  experienced  on  his  way  home  in  De- 
cember, 1849.  He  was  then  an  old  man,  and 
exposure,  added  to  the  loss  of  the  greater  part 
of  his  life's  work,  so  preyed  upon  his  mind  and 
health  that  he  never  again  practised  his  pro- 


America  was  by  no  means  dependent  upon 
Europe,  though,  for  successful  practitioners  of 
this  Black  Art.  William  Henry  Brown,  a  na- 
tive of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  made  very 
many  paper  portraits  all  over  the  United 
States,  establishing  in  each  town  which  he 
visited  a  shop  which,  for  the  time,  bore  the 
name  of  the  Brown  Gallery.  He,  too,  has 
written  a  book  *  about  his  sitters  and  has  illus- 
trated the  work  with  twelve  of  his  silhouettes, 
mostly  full  lengths  with  elaborate  backgrounds, 
as  well  as  with  facsimile  autograph  letters  of 
the  people  whose  portraits  are  .reproduced  in 
the  volume. 

1 "  Portrait  Gallery  of  Distinguished  American  Cituseui,  with 
biographical  Sketches,"  by  William  H.  Brown,  and  facsimiles  of 
original  letters.    Hartford.    Published  by  E.  B.  and  E.  C.  K" 


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346 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


Enter  now  Daguerre,  "  the  apothecary  pic- 
ture man! "  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  who  was  an 
artist  as  well  as  a  scientist,  was  the  principal 
means  of  introducing  to  this  country  the  results 
of  Daguerre's  experiments.  In  1839  Morse 
journeyed  to  Paris  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
a  patent  covering  his  telegraphic  apparatus; 
but  he  had  made  all  arrangements  to  return  to 
America  when,  in  conversation  with  the  Amer- 
ican Consul,  Mr.  Robert  Walsh,  he  one  morn- 
ing remarked:  "  I  do  not  like  to  go  home  with- 
out having  first  seen  Daguerre's  results."  Mr. 
Walsh  suggested  that  Daguerre  be  invited  by 
Morse  to  see  his  telegraphic  apparatus,  in  re- 
turn for  which  courtesy  he  would  doubtless 
invite  the  American  to  see  his  pictures.  And 
it  so  fell  out. 

Daguerre  had  not  yet  succeeded  in  making 
portraits,  and  he  told  Professor  Morse  that  he 
doubted  if  it  could  be  done;  but  already  he 
could  show  absolutely  perfect  images  of  streets, 
buildings,  interiors,  and  works  of  art,  and  for 
these  Morse's  enthusiasm  was  unbounded. 
Then  Niepce,  who  for  fifteen  years  had  been 
experimenting  independently  with  methods  of 
fixing  the  image  of  the  camera  obscura  —  an  in- 
strument known  for  nearly  two  centuries  —  met 
Daguerre,  and  the  two  pooled  their  discoveries. 
Thus  the  process  was  pushed  forward  to  a  point 
where  pictures  of  people  were  made  possible. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  347 

France,  which  had  the  honor  of  this  great  dis- 
covery, honored  itself  by  treating  with  ex- 
treme liberality  the  two  men  who  had  brought 
their  experiments  to  a  successful  issue.  Daguerre 
was  given  an  annual  pension  of  six  thousand 
francs  and  Niepce  one  of  four  thousand  francs, 
on  condition  that  they  publish  their  process. 
This  condition  was  accepted,  and  Daguerre 
hastened  at  once  to  put  Morse,  who  had  mean- 
while returned  to  America,  in  possession  of  all 
knowledge  necessary  to  practise  this  new  art 
with  entire  success.  At  once  Morse's  brothers, 
Sidney  E.  and  Richard  C.  Morse,  fitted  up  on 
the  corner  of  Nassau  and  Beekman  Streets, 
New  York,  what  they  called  their  "  palace  of 
the  sun." 

Then,  in  the  fall  of  1839,  there  arrived  in  this 
country  a  teacher  direct  from  Daguerre  himself, 
Francois  Gouraud,  who,  in  March,  1840,  en- 
joyed a  very  successful  season  in  Boston,  finally 
publishing  a  pamphlet  embodying  his  lectures 
and  giving  a  "  provisory  method  for  taking 
Human  Portraits."  This  method  was  by  no 
means  simple.  Not  only  must  the  room  be  of 
certain  shape  and  kind,  but  "  the  chair  on 
which  the  person  sits  must  be  of  yellow  wood. 
The  person,  if  a  man,  must  be  dressed  in  a  clear 
gray  coat;  pantaloons  of  a  little  deeper  hue; 
a  vest  of  a  fancy  ground,  —  yellow,  orange,  if 
possible,  —  with  figures  of  a  color  to  make  a 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


contrast;  the  whiteness  of  the  shirt  contrasting 
with  a  cravat  of  a  gray  ground  either  a  little 
less  dark  or  more  deep  than  the  coat.  The 
toilet  of  a  lady  should  be  of  the  same  shades, 
and  in  all  cases  black  must  be  constantly  avoided, 
as  well  as  green  and  red."  That  the  eyes  of  the 
subject  should  be  closed  was,  at  first,  considered 
another  condition  necessary  to  success.  The 
time  of  the  exposure  was  from  ten  to  twenty 
minutes. 

Mr.  Francis  Colby  Gray,  a  leader  in  Boston 
art  affairs  and  one  of  the  directors  of  Harvard 
College,  interested  himself  greatly  in  Gouraud 
and  made  it  possible  for  his  first  classes  to  as- 
semble in  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society;  but  by  the  end  of 
1840,  the  methods  this  teacher  advocated  had 
been  so  greatly  improved  that  several  men  in 
Boston  were  taking  daguerreotypes  as  a  means 
of  livelihood,  and  the  traveling  car  began  to 
penetrate  into  all  parts  of  New  England. 

"  Monday  was  looked  upon  as  the  best  day 
for  business,"  observes  Mrs.  D.  T.  Davis  — 
to  whose  delightful  article,'  "The  Daguerreo- 
type in  America,"  I  find  myself  deeply  indebted, 
"  because  of  the  Sunday  night  courtship,  the 
first  outcome  of  which  was  the  promise  to  ex- 
change daguerreotypes.  No  less  sure  than  Mon- 
day   itself    came    the    gentleman    escorting    his 

1  McClure't  Magatint,  November,  1896. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  349 

sweetheart.  He  selected  the  most  expensive 
cases  and  paid  for  both  pictures.  And  it  was 
a  happy  man  in  these  instances  that  put  the 
maiden's  picture  into  his  pocket,,  for  he  knew 
there  was  but  one  '  counterfeit  presentment ' 
of  her  in  existence,  and  he  had  it." 

The  most  famous  studio  in  New  England 
was  that  of  Southworth  and  Hawes,  which 
opened  at  19  Tremont  Row,  Boston,  in  1841, 
and  which,  for  more  than  half  a  century,  kept 
on  doing  business  at  this  same  old  stand. 
Webster  and  Pierce,  Garrison  and  Sumner, 
Wendell  Phillips,  Emerson,  and  Charlotte  Cush- 
man  were  a  few  of  the  distinguished  people  of 
whom  Mr.  Hawes  here  made  likenesses.  But, 
happily,  the  time  had  now  come  when  people 
who  were  neither  rich  nor  distinguished  could 
have  their  pictures  taken. 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


CHAPTER   IX 


READING    BOOKS 


IT  was  to  be  expected,  I  suppose,  the  motive 
behind  the  settlement  of  New  England 
being  what  it  was,  that  the  only  books 
cordially  recommended  by  pastors  and  masters, 
in  early  days,  were  those  which  dealt  with  the 
relation  of  the  soul  to  God.  "  When  thou  canst 
read,"  counselled  Thomas  White,  a  Puritan 
minister,  "  read  no  ballads  and  romances  and 
foolish  books,  but  the  Bible  and  the  Plaine 
Man's  Pathway  to  Heaven,  a  very  holy  book  for 
you.  Get  the  Practice  of  Piety,  Mr.  Baxter's 
call  to  the  Unconverted,  Allen's  Alarm  to  the 
Unconverted,  and  The  Book  of  Martyrs." 

In  a  catalogue  of  Harvard  College,  printed 
in  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
there  is  no  mention  of  any  book  by  Addison, 
of  any  of  the  poems  of  Pope  or  of  the  many 
works  which  had  recently  been  put  out  in  Eng- 
land by  Dryden,  Steele,  Young,  and  Prior. 
And  not  until  the  year  1722,  according  to  so 
careful  a  chronicler  as  Alice  Morse  Earlc,  were 
the  works  of  Shakespeare  advertised  in  Boston ! 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  351 

The  scarcity  and  limited  scope  of  books,  out 
in  the  country,  even  as  late  as  the  first  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  painful  to  con- 
template. It  is  doubtful  if  any  typical  New 
England  village  could  have  assembled  more 
than  one  hundred  books  —  outside  of  religious 
works!  A  bookish  boy,  looking  about  for  some- 
thing to  read,  would  perhaps  have  been  able  to 
lay  hands  on  Josephus,  Rolltn's  "  Ancient  His- 
tory ",  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress ",  Pollok's 
"  Course  of  Time  ",  Cowper,  and  a  few  lives 
of  celebrated  preachers.  Shakespeare,  Dryden, 
Pope,  Addison,  and  Johnson  might  have  been 
found  lurking  in  secret  corners,  but  would  have 
been  by  no  means  easily  accessible.  And  Byron, 
Burns,  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  and  Keats  were 
then  as  caviare  to  the  general,  as  the  poems  of 
Tagore  might  be  to  Down  East  farmers  to-day. 

No  "  profane  "  author  was  ever  quoted  in  a 
discourse;  and  every  author  was  "profane", 
who  did  not  write  upon  religious  subjects  and 
along  evangelical  lines.  It  was  the  settled 
policy  of  the  religious  leaders  of  New  England 
to  ignore  all  poets  except  Milton  and  all  prose 
writers  except  Bunyan.  In  fact,  the  Bible  was 
held  to  be  the  only  really  reputable  book.  And 
so  the  Bible  was  read  over  and  over  again. 
Robert  Hale  records  in  his  diary  that  he  is  read- 
ing the  Bible  for  the  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
fourth  time! 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


Now  and  then,  however,  one  comes  upon 
surprising  evidence  that  the  great  books  of  the 
world  were  sometimes  read  in  remote  corners 
of  New  England.  Who  would  think  to  find 
the  fisherfolk  of  Siasconset,  on  the  island  of 
Nantucket,  reciting  long  passages  from  Butler's 
"  Hudibras  "  and  reading  Josephus  with  deep 
enjoyment  in  the  eighties  of  the  eighteenth 
century?  According  to  so  veracious  a  chronicler 
as  Crevecoeur,1  however,  this  really  happened. 
He  himself  wondered  about  it  as  much  as  we 
could.  "  No  one  knows  who  first  imported 
these  books,"  he  comments.  And  then,  concern- 
ing the  Nantucketers'  fondness  for  Butler's 
witty  satire  on  Puritanism,  adds:  "  It  is  some- 
thing extraordinary  to  see  this  people,  pro- 
fessedly so  grave,  and  strangers  to  every  branch 
of  literature,  reading  with  pleasure  the  former 
work,  which  would  seem  to  require  some  degree 
of  taste  and  antecedent  historical  knowledge. 
They  all  read  it  much,  and  can  by  memory  re- 
peat many  passages." 

This  was  no  more  typical  reading  among  late 
eighteenth-century  fisherfolk,  of  course,  than 
were  the  books  enjoyed  by  Mary  Moody  Emer- 
son typical  literary  provender  of  a  maiden  born 
just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution. 
The  early  reading  of  Emerson's  aunt  included 
Milton,  Young,  Akenside,  Samuel  Clarke,  and 

1  "  Letters  from  An  American  Farmer." 


£    si 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND 


353 


Jonathan  Edwards;  and  later  she  greatly  en- 
joyed Plato,  Plotinus,  Marcus  Antoninus, 
Stewart,  Coleridge,  Cousin,  Herder,  Locke, 
Madame  De  Stael,  Channing,  Mackintosh,  and 
Byron.  Of  no  other  woman  of  her  generation, 
probably,  was  it  true  that  "  Plato,  Aristotle 
and  Plotinus  were  as  venerable  and  organic  as 
Nature  in  her  mind."  But  of  many  of  her  con- 
temporaries it  might  very  likely  have  been 
said,  as  her  distinguished  nephew  further  says 
of  her,  that  "  Milton  and  Young  had  a  religious 
authority  in  their  minds  and  nowise  the  slight 
merely  entertaining  quality  of  modern  bards."  ' 

In  very  few  men,  indeed,  were  the  Latin  and 
Greek  sages  "  organic."  The  languages  of  the 
ancients  were,  of  course,  studied,  as  languages, 
by  youths  who  were  preparing  for  the  ministry; 
but  most  New  England  parsons  did  not  regard 
the  classics  of  these  tongues  "with  any  great 
affection,  for  the  reason  that  they  served  to 
keep  alive  familiarity  with  false  gods. 

A  notable  exception  in  this  way  was  the 
Reverend  John  Checkley,  who,  in  1738,  suc- 
ceeded the  Reverend  Arthur  Browne  as  rector 
of  the  King's  Church,  Providence.  Browne 
had  been  educated  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
and  is  said  to  have  come  to  America  with  Dean 
Berkeley.  In  1730  he  entered  upon  his  pastor- 
ate at  Providence  and  served  there  very  ac- 

1  Atlantic  Monthly,  ] 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


ceptably  until  he  resigned  to  become  the  rector 
of  St.  John's  Church  in  Portsmouth,  New  Hamp- 
shire. Checkley,  his  successor  in  the  Rhode 
Island  town,  was  a  man  of  varied  and  colorful 
history.  Born  in  Boston  in  1680  and  educated 
at  the  Boston  Latin  School,  he  went  to  Oxford 
to  complete  his  studies  and  then  traveled  ex- 
tensively in  Europe,  collecting  everywhere  man- 
uscripts, paintings,  and  books.  After  which 
he  returned  to  Boston  and  opened  a  book-shop. 
This  was  in  1717. 

Checkley  called  his  little  shop  the  " 
and  Blue-Gate  "  and,  being  the  man  he  wa 
soon  made  it  a  literary  center.    But,  before  ma 
months,  the  shocking  news  leaked  out  that  t 
strange   doctrine   of   the  Apostolic   Succession 
was  here  being  urged.     Following  which, 
bookseller  turned  author  and  publisher  and, 
support  of  his  extraordinary  views,  offered 
the    Boston    public    two   pamphlets,    which 
stirred     the     Massachusetts     authorities     tha 
Checkley  was  at  once  called  upon  to  take 
oaths  of  allegiance  and  abjuration.     This  1 
proprietor    of    the    "  Crown    and    Blue-Gate ' 
declined  to  do  and,  as  an  alternative,  paid 
fine  of  six  pounds. 

Apparently  Checkley  had  already  made  i 
his  mind  to  become  a  priest  of  the  Church  < 
England;   but  fourteen  long  years  passed  before 
he  was  accepted  as  a  candidate,  and  when  i 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  355 

was,  the  parish  offered  him  was  the  one  Browne 
had  just  left.  But  he  accepted  gladly  the  op- 
portunity which  thus  offered  to  follow  the  ca- 
reer he  had  chosen  for  himself  and,  journeying 
to  Providence,  established  himself  and  his  books 
in  the  comfortable  rectory  which  Browne  had 
generously  endowed.  At  this  time,  his  library 
numbered  nearly  a  thousand  volumes  and  in- 
cluded many  folios  and  quartos  in  Greek,  Latin, 
Hebrew,  French,  and  other  languages.  To 
which  he  was  able  to  add,  upon  the  death  of  his 
parishioner  and  friend,  John  Merritt,  in  1770, 
thirty  pounds'  worth  of  "  Books  which  he  may 
chuse  out  of  my  Library  according  to  the  value 
in  the  Catalogue."  Mr.  Merritt  was  also  a 
bibliophile,  and  among  his  books  were  many 
volumes  of  English  poetry  and  essays,  such 
classics  as  Csesar,  Horace,  Marcus  Aurelius, 
and  the  plays  of  Sophocles,  works  on  agricul- 
ture, dictionaries,  and  gazetteers  as  well  as  a 
considerable  array  of  volumes  dealing  with 
theology.  Checkley  chose  wisely  from  among 
all  these,  and  since  he  was  a  man  who  used 
books  as  well  as  owned  them,  the  influence  of 
the  treasures  in  his  possession  was  enormous. 
For  he  eked  out  his  slender  income  by  tutoring, 
and  he  often  lent  his  books  to  his  pupils.  Thus 
he  helped  greatly  to  foster,  in  pre-Revolution- 
ary  Providence,  the  habit  of  reading  books.  A 
century  before  his  time,  the  largest  library  in 


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366 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


this  important  town  had  been  owned  by  William 
Harris  and  consisted  of  twenty-six  volumes, 
eleven  of  which  were  law  books.1 

All  this  while  scarcely  anything  of  the  first 
order,  however,  had  been  written  in  New  Eng- 
land.    The  first  two  centuries  of  this  country's 
history    were    precisely    the    centuries    during 
which,  in  old  England,  poets,  historians,  novel- 
ists, and  essayists  had  produced  many  immortal 
works.     Yet,  although   many  of  the  colonists 
were  liberally  educated  men,  no  work  of  un- 
questionable genius  appeared  prior  to  Bryant's 
"  Thanatopsis  "  and  Irving's  "  Sketch  Book.* 
The  platitudes  of  the  "  Bay  Psalm-Book 
about  the  average  of  our  literary  products 
and  the  verse  of  Anne  Bradstreet  is  the  besl 
that  we  can  show  up  to  the  nineteenth  century, 
It  was  not  then  recognized  that  the  letters  of 
Abigail  Adams  and  the  diary  of  Samuel  Se1 
were  literature;  it  remained  for  our  own  day 
accord  to  these  lively  and  veracious  accoun' 
of  contemporary  occurrences  the  high  stam 
they    deserve.      Mrs.    Adams's   friend,    Me: 
Warren,  on    the  other    hand,  was    highly 
garded  as  a  literary  woman,  though  nobody  i 
our  time  would  have  the  patience  to  read  h( 
tiresome  poems  and  her  long,  dull  tragedies. 

The  first    "  prolific  "   American   author  wi 


on; 
>est 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  357 

Cotton  Mather.  He  wrote  upwards  of  four 
hundred  books  and  found  this  occupation  so 
congenial  that  he  declared  work  to  be  his  recre- 
ation, while  play  was  to  him  a  toil.  Reading 
the  results  of  his  recreation  would  be  a  "  toil  " 
to-day,  not  to  say  the  severest  of  hard  labor, 
both  because  of  their  matter  and  their  manner. 
Most  of  Mather's  writings  are  a  faithful  mirror 
of  the  man,  and  the  man,  at  any  rate  on  his 
writing  side,  was  a  narrow-minded  egotist. 
As  a  preacher,  he  seems  to  have  been  con- 
scientious and  sincere;  as  a  pastor,  he  was  ten- 
der and  devoted.  But  the  fasts  and  vigils  to 
which  he  subjected  himself,  the  rules  by  which 
he  governed  every  event  in  his  life,  are  so  faith- 
fully recorded  in  his  four  hundred  books  as  to 
make  almost  any  one  of  them  painful. 

The  most  famous  production  of  this  typic- 
ally Puritan  writer  was  called  "  Magnalia 
Christ!  Americana;  or  the  ecclesiastical  history 
of  New  England  from  its  first  planting,  in  the 
year  1620,  unto  the  year  of  our  Lord,  1698." 
The  "  Magnalia "  was  published  in  London 
in  1702;  its  author  never  said  a  truer  word 
than  when,  in  an  unconsciously  naive  moment, 
he  pronounced  it  "  bulky."  For  this  work  is 
divided  into  seven  parts  and  concerns  itself 
with  (1)  The  History  of  the  Settlement  in 
New  England;  (2)  Biographies  of  governors;  (8) 
Lives  of  eminent  divines  and  others;    (4)  His- 


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358  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

tory  of  Harvard  College;  (5)  "The  faith  and 
order  of  the  churches; "  (6)  Illustrious  and 
wonderful  providences;  (7)  Struggles  of  the 
New  England  churches  with  "  their  various 
adversaries  "  —  the  Devil,  Separatists,  Fauai- 
lists,  Antinomians,  Quakers,  clerical  impostors, 
and  Indians.  Professor  Moses  Coit  Tyler  pro- 
nounces this  work,  despite  its  great  and  obvious 
faults  of  style,  the  most  famous  book  of  all  Cot- 
ton Mather's  works  and,  what  constitutes  real 
praise,  "  the  most  famous  book  produced  by 
any  American  during  the  Colonial  time.'r 
We  may  as  well  accept  this  dictum;  it  car- 
ries with  it  no  obligation  to  read  the  "  Mag- 
nalia  "  in  toto.  One  fact  that  no  writer  con- 
cerning old  New  England  can  blink,  however, 
is  that  Cotton  Mather  has  included  in  this  ap- 
palling work  pretty  much  everything  that 
known  about  our  early  history. 

"  The  Wonders  of  The  Invisible  Wrorld  '* 
another  famous  product  of  Cotton  Mather's 
tireless  pen.  This  work,  in  a  very  special  way, 
shows  Mather  in  relation  to  his  times.  The 
age  was  one  of  delusions  and  superstition,  and 
Cotton  Mather  was  its  chief  exponent.  He  was 
as  sure  as  he  was  sure  of  heaven  that  before  the 
Puritans  came  to  New  England  the  Devil  had 
reigned  over  this  fair  land.  He  believed,  in 
fact,  that  his  Satanic  Majesty  still  reigned  in- 

1  "  History  of  American  Literature,"  Muses  Coit  Tyler,  p.  80. 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  359 

termittently  in  the  persons  of  certain  of  the  new 
settlers.  This  was  his  explanation  of  witch- 
craft. He  believed  so  firmly  in  witchcraft 'that 
he  made  other  people  believe  in  it;  thus  his  in- 
fluence and  his  writings  were  very  largely  re- 
sponsible for  the  witch  persecutions  with  which 
the  pages  of  New  England  history  are  black- 
ened. 

To  credit  Cotton  Mather  with  having  in- 
creased witchcraft  is  not  to  account  for  its 
early  manifestations.  Michelet's  explanation 
is  that  in  the  oppression  and  dearth  of  every 
kind  of  ideal  interest  in  rural  populations,  some 
safety-valve  had  to  be  found,  and  that  there 
very  likely  were,  at  one  time,  organized  secret 
meetings  —  actual  witches'  Sabbaths,  so  to 
say  —  to  supply  this  need  of  sensation.  The 
thing  once  started  in  a  degenerate  community 
grew,  of  course,  by  what  it  fed  upon,  just  as 
suicidal  mania  and  "  disappearing  girls  "  are 
increased,  in  our  own  day,  by  the  screaming 
headlines  of  the  yellow  press.  Within  a  few 
months,  in  Salem,  several  hundred  people  were 
arrested  as  witches  and  thrown  into  jail!  Things 
soon  came  to  such  a  pass  that  as  Governor 
Hutchinson,  the  historian  of  the  time,  points 
out,  the  only  way  to  prevent  an  accusation  of 
witchcraft  was  to  become  an  accuser  oneself; 
just  as,  during  the  Reign  of  Terror  in  France, 
men  of  property  and  position  frequently  threw 


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360  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

E|    , 

J  suspicion  on  their  neighbors'  heads,  the  bett 

!  to  save  their  own. 

p  Cotton  Mather  had  never  heard  of  hypnotisi 

']  and  suggestion,  but  he  had  heard  of  the  Dev 

and,  being  convinced  that  the  Devil  was  worl 
ing  through  witches,  he  held  it  as  a  sacred  dut 
to  write  his  conviction  large.  He  had  take 
under  his  personal  care  the  Goodwin  children 
who  were  believed  to  be  witches,  and  had  stuc 
ied  their  cases  very  carefully.  Who,  better  tha 
he,  could  serve  God  by  putting  the  Devil  t 

|  flight? 

. '  A  bare  outline  of  the  facts  about  these  famou 

children,  as  given  in  Governor  Hutchinson's  ac 

I  '■  count    and    reproduced  by  Mr.  Poole    in   th 

r ;,  "  Memorial  History  of  Boston,"  is  as  follows: 

"  In  1687  or  1688  .  .  .  four  of  the  childrei 
of  John  Goodwin,  a  grave  man  and  good  live 

'  at  the  north  part  of  Boston,  were  generall; 

believed  to  be  bewitched.  I  have  often  hear 
persons  who  were  in  the  neighborhood  speak  o 
the  great  consternation  it'  occasioned.  Th 
children  were  all  remarkable  for  ingenuity  o 
temper,  had  been  religiously  educated,  wer 
thought  to  be  without  guile.  The  eldest  was  i 
girl  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  years.  She  ha< 
charged  a  laundress  with  taking  away  some  o 
the  family  linen.  The  mother  of  the  laundres 
was  one  of  the  wild  Irish,  of  bad  character,  ani 
gave  the  girl  harsh  language;   soon  after  wbic 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  361 

she  [the  Goodwin  child]  fell  into  fits  which  were 
said  to  have  something  diabolical  in  them. 
One  of  her  sisters  and  two  brothers  followed 
her  example,  and,  it  is  said,  were  tormented  in 
the  same  part  of  their  bodies  at  the  same  time, 
although  kept  in  separate  apartments  and  igno- 
rant of  one  another's  complaints.  .  .  .  Some- 
times they  would  be  deaf,  then  dumb,  then 
blind;  and  sometimes  all  these  disorders  to- 
gether would  come  upon  them.  Their  tongues 
would  be  drawn  down  their  throats,  then  pulled 
out  upon  their  chins.  Their  jaws,  necks,  shoul- 
ders, elbows  and  all  other  joints  would  appear 
to  be  dislocated,  and  they  would  make  the  most 
piteous  outcries  of  burnings,  of  being  cut  with 
knives,  beat,  etc.,  and  the  marks  of  wounds 
were  afterwards  to  be  seen. 

"The  ministers  of  Boston  and  CharlestOwn 
kept  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  at  the  troubled 
house;  after  which  the  youngest  child  made  no 
more  complaints.  The  others  persevered  and 
the  magistrates  then  interposed,  and  the  old 
woman  was  apprehended;  but  upon  examination 
would  neither  confess  nor  deny,  and  appeared 
to  be  disordered  in  her  senses.  Upon  the  re- 
port of  physicians  that  she  was  compos  mentis, 
she  was  executed,  declaring  at  her  death  the 
children  should  not  be  relieved." 

The  kind  of  book  Cotton  Mather  would  write 
from  such  data  as  this  is  more  pleasantly  imag- 


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362 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


■ 


ined  than  perused.  For  here,  ready  to  hand, 
were  horrors  after  Mather's  own  heart.  That 
he  would  squeeze  every  last  drop  of  agony  out 
of  them  goes  without  saying.  Only  less  painful 
than  the  subject  matter  of  this  book  is  its  style. 
Yet  the  hook  was  a  "  best  seller  "  in  its  day, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Cotton  Mather 
here  shows  himself  most  pitiably  a  pedant. 

Pedantry,  to  be  sure,  would  necessarily  mark 
a  life  so  warped  and  stunted  by  precosity  as 
was  Mather's.  "At  the  Age  of  little  more  than 
eleven  years,"  he  writes  of  himself,  "  I  had 
composed  many  Latin  exercises,  both  in  prose 
and  verse,  and  could  speak  Latin  so  readily,  that 
I  could  write  notes  of  sermons  of  the  English 
preacher  in  it.  I  had  conversed  with  Cato, 
Corderius,  Terence,  Ovid  and  Virgil.  I  had 
made  Epistles  and  Themes;  presenting  my 
first  Theme  to  my  Master,  without  his  requiring 
or  expecting  as  yet  any  such  thing  of  me;  where- 
upon he  complimented  me  Luudabilis  Diligentia 
tua.  I  hat!  gone  through  a  great  part  of  the 
New  Testament  in  Greek.  I  had  read  con- 
siderably in  Socrates  and  Homer,  and  I  had 
made  some  entrance  in  my  Hebrew  grammar. 
And  I  think  before  I  came  to  fourteen,  I  com- 
posed Hebrew  exercises  and  Ran  thro'  the  other 
Sciences,  that  Academical  Students  ordinarily 
fall  upon." 

Such  a  boyhood  could  not  be  expected   to 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  363 

produce  a  man  with  great  humanity;  Cotton 
Mather  is  a  perfect  illustration  of  Buffon's  con- 
tention that  "  style  is  the  man  himself."  Thus, 
while  his  early  writings  are  pedantic  and  big- 
oted, his  later  ones  are  steeped  in  bitterness. 
For  he  lived  to  see  the  downfall  of  the  theoc- 
racy which  had  meant  so  much  to  him,  and  he 
suffered  a  grievous  personal  disappointment 
in  not  being  elected  president  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege as  his  father  had  been  before  him. 

It  is  in  Mather's  "  Magnalia  "  that  we  first 
come  upon  the  name  of  Anne  Bradstreet, "  whose 
poems,  divers  times  printed,  have  afforded  a 
grateful  entertainment  unto  the  ingenuous, 
and  a  monument  for  her  memory  beyond  the 
stateliest  marbles!"  It  is  a  pleasure  to  paas 
from  the  Mathers  to  the  short  and  simple  an- 
nals of  New  England's  first  woman-poet. 

Anne  Bradstreet 'a  early  days  were  passed  in 
surroundings  favorable  to  poetic  development, 
and  a  good  deal  that  is  really  beautiful  may, 
therefore,  be  found  in  her  verses.  She  was 
born  in  England  in  1612;  her  father  was  stew- 
ard of  the  estates  of  the  Puritan  nobleman,  the 
Earl  of  Lincoln,  and  the  impressionable  days 
of  her  childhood  were  many  of  them  passed  in 
the  earl's  library,  among  the  treasures  of  which 
she  was  permitted  to  browse  at  will.  When 
she  reached  the  age  of  sixteen,  she  married 
Simon  Bradstreet,  a  graduate  of  Cambridge 


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364 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


University,  and  two  years  later  sailed  bravely 
away  with  hiiii  to  the  rudenesses  and  hardships 
of  New  England.  "  I  found  a  new  world  and 
new  manners,"  she  says,  "  at  which  my  heart 
rose.  But  after  I  was  convinced  it  was  the  way 
of  God,  I  submitted  to  it." 

In  1644,  having  previously  tried  their  fate 
in  a  number  of  other  places,  the  Bradstreets 
settled  on  the  outskirts  of  Andover,  Massachu- 
setts; and  there  the  poet  lived  the  rest  of  her 
life  and  died  in  1672.  The  house  with  which 
she  is  intimately  associated  (in  North  Andover) 
still  stands.  Its  frame  is  massive,  its  walls  are 
lined  with  bricks,  and  in  its  heart  is  an 
enormous  chimney,  heavily  buttressed.  Anne 
Bradstreet  died  in  an  upper  chamber  of  this 
pleasant  mansion,  and  on  its  sloping  lawn  to- 
day are  trees  which  she  long  ago  planted.  It  is 
believed  that  her  remains  were  interred  in  the 
old  burying-ground  directly  adjoining,  but  no 
trace  of  her  grave  can  be  found  here. 

Her  poems,  however,  live  and  must  be  ac- 
corded a  high  place  in  any  American  anthology 
of  verse.  Almost  all  American  singers  have 
chanted  either  the  sea  or  the  changing  beauties 
of  some  dearly  loved  river.  It  was  a  river  of 
which  Anne  Bradstreet  sang,  the  Merrimac. 
In  certain  lines  of  her  Contemplations,  inspired 
by  this  stream,  we  find  the  first  authentically 
poetic  note  in  American  literature: 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  366 

"  Under  the  cooling  shadow  of  a  stately  elm, 

Close  sat  I  by  a  goodly  river's  side, 
Where  gliding  streams  the  rocks  did  overwhelm; 

A  lonely  place,  with  pleasure  dignified. 
I  once  that  loved  the  shady  woods  so  well, 
Now  thought  the  rivers  did  the  trees  excel, 
And  if  the  sun  would  ever  shine,  there  would  I 
dwell." 


Anne  Bradstreet  was  a  very  prolific  poet, 
but  Michael  Wigglesworth  stood  not  far  behind 
her  in  the  multitude  of  verses  which  he  pro- 
duced. And  his  masterpiece,  which  bore  the 
engaging  title,  The  Day  of  Doom,  exceeded  in 
popularity  any  other  work,  whether  in  prose 
or  verse,  produced  in  America  before  the  Revo- 
lution. Eighteen  hundred  copies  of  its  first 
edition  were  sold  within  a  single  year,  which 
implies,  as  Professor  Tyler  points  out,1  the  pur- 
chase of  one  copy  by  every  thirty-fifth  person 
then  in  New  England.  Surely,  an  astonishing 
record  for  an  age  when  reading  books  of  any 
kind  was  far  from  being  a  national  habit. 

This  great  poem  which,  with  entire  uncon- 
sciousness, attributes  to  the  Divine  Being  "  a 
character  the  most  execrable  to  be  met  with, 
perhaps,  in  any  literature,  Christian  or  pagan," 
now  impresses  the  reader  only  as  a  curious  and 
interesting  literary  phenomenon;  but  its  fearful 

'  New  York,  G.  P.  Put- 


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366 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


lines  seemed  the  literal  truth  to  the  first  three 
or  four  generations  who  perused  them.  Joseph 
T.  Buckingham  mentions  that  even  after  the 
Revolution  he  read  this  book  with  great  ex- 
citement and  fright;  and  Lowell  playfully  re- 
marks that  it  "  was  the  solace  of  every  fireside, 
the  flicker  of  the  pine-knots  by  which  it  was 
conned  perhaps  adding  a  livelier  relish  to  its 
premonitions  of  eternal  combustion."  Every- 
body believed  devoutly  in  the  Hell  here  so 
luridly  pictured.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore, 
that  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  after  its 
first  publication,  The  Day  of  Doom  continued 
to  be  the  supreme  poem  of  Puritan  New  England. 
Cotton  Mather  cheerfully  predicted  that  it 
would  continue  to  be  read  in  New  England 
until  the  day  of  doom  itself  should  arrive. 

Another  large  poem  of  Wigglesworth's  had 
the  curious  title:  Meat  out  of  the  Eater.  This 
was  first  published  about  1669  and  served  to 
comfort  the  afflicted  of  the  Colonial  age  very 
much  as  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam  comforted 
the  bereaved  of  the  mid-Victorian  era.  The  full 
title  of  this  poem  is  Meat  out  of  the  Eater;  or. 
Meditations  concerning  the  necessity,  end,  and 
usefulness  of  afflictions  unto  God's  children,  all 
tending  to  prepare  them  for  and  comfort  them  un 
der  the  Cross. 

In  spite  of  the  enormous  sales  achieved  by 
Wigglesworth,   books  were  not  yet  bought  at 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  367 

all  generally  in  New  England.  When  the  Rev- 
erend Thomas  Harvard,  minister  of  King's 
Chapel,  died  (in  1736)  happy  in  the  belief  that 
he  would  find  "  no  Gout  or  Stone  "  in  heaven; 
he  left  a  library  of  "  only  ninety  works,  mostly 
small  and  of  poor  quality."  Yet  he  was  an 
active  writer  —  perhaps  of  such  books  as  this 
from  the  pen  of  a  fellow-parson,  which  I  find 
advertised  in  the  Boston  News-Letter  of  Septem- 
ber 9,  1725: 

"  There  is  now  in  the  Press,  &  will  soon  be 
published,  The  Strange  Adventures  &  Deliver- 
ances of  Philip  Ashton,  of  Marblehead,  in  New 
England.  Who,  being  taken  &  forcibly  de- 
tained about  8  Months  on  board  the  Pirate  Low, 
afterwards  made  his  escape  on  the  Desolate 
Island  of  Roatan;  where  he  liv'd  alone  for  the 
space  of  Sixteen  Months.  With  the  surprising 
account  of  his  Subsistence  and  Manner  of 
Living  there,  and  of  many  Deaths  from  which 
he  was  Rescued,  by  the  Over-Ruling  Providence 
of  God;  as  also  the  Means  of  his  final  Deliver- 
ance &  Return  home,  after  almost  3  Years  ab- 
sence. Drawn  up  &  Published  from  his  own 
Mouth,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  John  Barnard,  Pastor 
of  a  Church  in  Marblehead;  With  a  Sermon  on 
that  Occasion,  from  Dan.  Ill  17.  To  which  is 
added  a  Short  Account  of  Nicholas  Meritt's 
Escape  from  the  Pirate  aforesaid,  who  was  taken 
at  the  same  time.    To  be  sold  by  Samuel  Qer- 


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368  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

risk  near  the  Brick  Meeting  House  in  Cornhill, 
Boston." 

In  the  large  towns,  along  with  Bibles,  Psalters, 
Watts *s  Hymns,  and  sermons  preached  to 
pirates,  there  were  offered  for  sale  from  1744  to 
1751,  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  ",  "  The  Academy 
of  Compliments  ",  "  Laugh  and  Be  Fat  ",  "  A 
History  of  Pirates  ",  "  Reynard  The  Fox  ", 
"  Pamela  ",  "  La  Belle  Assembly  ",  "  Clarissa  ", 
"  Peregrine  Pickle  ",  "  Tom  Jones  ",  La  Fon- 
taine's "  Fables  '*,  and  "  Robinson  Crusoe  ", 
besides  the  Spectator  and  other  London  period- 
icals of  the  day.  Books  were  often  purchased 
in  cheap  covers  and  rebound  to  suit  the  indi- 
vidual taste  and  purse.  Hence  the  advertis* 
ments  of  many  bookbinders  may  be  found  in 
the  Colonial  newspapers.  Also  there,  in  print 
for  which  a  good  rate  per  line  has  been  paid, 
are  found  numerous  advertisements  for  book; 
which  have  been  borrowed  but  not  returned 
Thus  in  1748  and  1749  we  read: 

"  The  she-person  who  has  borrowed  Mr.  Tho 
Brown's  works  from  a  gentleman  she  is  well  i 
quainted  with,  is  desired  to  return  them  speedily.' 

"  The  person   that  so  ingeniously  borrowed 
Sir  Isaac  Newton's  works  out  of  my  printing 
office  is  earnestly  desired  to  return  them  sp> 
ily,  they  being  none  of  my  property." 

Again,    in    1763,    some    one    advertises 
ironically: 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  369 

"  Lent  to  some  persons  who  have  too  much 
modesty  to  return  them  unasked, — The  first 
volume  of  Swift's  works  of  a  small  edition. 
The  ninth  volume  of  the  Critical  Review.  One 
volume  of  Tristram  Shandy,  and  the  first  part 
of  Candid.  The  owner's  arms  and  name  in 
each,  who  will  be  much  obliged  to  the  bor- 
rowers for  the  perusal  of  the  above  books  when 
they  have  no  further  use  for  them." 

Obviously  there  had  occurred  in  our  literary 
history  by  this  time,  what  has  been  character- 
ized as  an  "  aesthetical  thaw."  Before  1760 
no  such  word  as  play  was  to  be  found  in  the 
vocabulary  of  grown  New  Englanders.  When 
they  were  not  working  hard  on  their  stony  soil, 
they  were  reading  hard  in  their  "  stony  books 
of  doctrine."  To  spend  time  on  works  of  the 
imagination  was  considered  an  idle  and  sinful 
waste.  But  when  the  moral  lyrics  of  Doctor 
Watts  failed  to  satisfy  the  growing  taste, 
there  was  a  reaching  out  towards  other  and 
better  books,  and  Milton,  Dryden,  Thomson, 
Pope,  and  Swift  began  to  be  admired,  while 
stray  copies  of  the  Spectator  were  eagerly  ab- 
sorbed by  those  so  lucky  as  to  possess  them. 

Robert  B.  Thomas,  publisher  of  the  "  Old 
Fanner's  Almanack  ",  offered,  in  1797,  an  as- 
tonishingly varied  list  of  books  which  might  be 
had  at  his  book-shop  in  Sterling,  Massachusetts. 
For    poetry    there    was    Goldsmith,    Milton, 


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370 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


Thomson's  "  Seasons  ",  and  Young  's  "  Night 
Thoughts",  as  well  as  Ovid's  "Art  of  Love", 
and  the  lyrics  of  Doctor  Watts.  In  the  field  of 
romances  and  novels,  Fielding  was  represented 
by  "  Tom  Jones  "  and  "  Joseph  Andrews  "; 
Smollett  by  *'  Roderick  Random  ",  Sterne  by 
"  The  Sentimental  Journey  ",  Miss  Burney  by 
"Evelina"  and  "Cecilia",  —  all  classics,  evi 
to-day.  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  thrilling  "  Mysterit 
of  Udolpho ",  Henry  Mackenzie's  "  Man 
Feeling  ",  Doctor  Johnson's  "  Rasselas  ",  the 
highly  correct  "  Sandford  and  Merton  ",  "  The 
Arabian  Nights  ",  "  Robinson  Crusoe  ",  Roche- 
foucault's  "  Maxims  ",  and  the  second  part  of 
Paine's  "  Age  of  Reason  "  are  other  readily 
recognized  titles  in  this  catholic  collection. 
Also  here  is  "  The  English  Hermit:  or  the  Un- 
paralleled Sufferings  and  Surprising  Adven- 
tures of  Philip  Quarll,  an  Englishman:  who  was 
discovered  by  Mr.  Dorrington,  a  British  Mer- 
chant, upon  an  uninhabited  Island,  in  the  South- 
sea;  where  he  lived  about  fifty  years,  without 
any  human  assistance."  This  work  was  ex- 
ceedingly popular  in  the  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  century,  being  a  highly  colored  and 
not  very  wholesome  variation  of  Defoe's  inimi- 
table masterpiece. 

The  almanac  in  which  this  list  of  books  was 
advertised  is  quite  as  interesting  to  us  of  to-day 
as  are  the  names  of  the  books  which  Mr.  Thomas 


by 
en 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  371 

thus  urged  upon  his  readers.  Almanacs  date 
back  to  the  very  dawn  of  printing  in  America. 
For  next  after  a  sheet  containing  "  The  Free- 
man's Oath  ",  the  first  production  that  came 
from  the  printing  press  in  this  country  was 
"  An  Almanac  calculated  for  New  England, 
by  Mr.  Pierce  ",  and  printed  by  Stephen  Daye, 
at  Cambridge,  in  1639.  Almost  annually  there- 
after a  similar  publication  was  issued  from  this 
press;  and  in  1676  Boston  produced  its  first 
almanac.  The  "  Rhode  Island  Almanac ", 
which  James  Franklin  published  and  which 
anticipated  much  of  the  wit  and  wisdom  later 
to  be  found  in  Benjamin  Franklin's  famous 
"  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  ",  dates  from  1728. 
Three  years  earlier,  Nathaniel  Ames,  physician 
and  innkeeper  of  Dedham,  Massachusetts,  had 
begun  to  issue  his  "  Astrpnomical  Diary  and 
Almanac  ",  a  work  which  he  continued  to  pub- 
lish until  his  death  in  1764,  and  which,  under 
his  management,  had  acquired  an  enormous 
popularity  throughout  New  England.  Professor 
Tyler  declares  that  Ames's  almanac,  which, 
from  the  first,  contained  in  high  perfection 
every  type  of  excellence  afterward  illustrated 
in  the  almanac  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  was  in 
most  respects  better  than  Franklin's,  and  was 
"  the  most  pleasing  representation  we  have  of  a 
form  of  literature  that  furnished  so  much  en- 
tertainment to  our  ancestors,   and  that  pre- 


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372  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

serves  for  us  so  many  characteristic  hints  of 
their  life  and  thought." 

For  the  purposes  of  the  present  chapter,  this 
almanac  is  chiefly  interesting  in  that  it  "  carried 
into  the  furthest  wildernesses  of  New  England 
some  of  the  best  English  literature;  pronoun- 
cing there,  perhaps  for  the  first  tune,  the  names 
of  Addison,  Thomson,  Pope,  Dryden,  Butler, 
Milton;  repeating  there  choice  fragments  of 
what  they  had  written." 

Perhaps  it  was  by  some  such  roundabout 
route  as  this  that  Jonathan  Edwards,  whom 
we  certainly  do  not  readily  associate  with  the 
reading  of  novels,  had  his  attention  called,  in 
the  latter  part  of  his  life,  to  "  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son  ",  and  was  so  fascinated  by  the  magic  of 
Richardson's  style  that  he  is  said  to  have  ex- 
pressed to  his  son  deep  regret  that  he  himself 
had  not  paid  more  attention  to  the  manner  of 
the  messages  he  had  to  convey.  But  Edwards, 
without  the  aid  of  Richardson,  had  the  funda- 
mental virtues  of  a  writer:  abundant  thought 
and  the  ability  to  put  his  meaning  clearly  and 
forcefully.  The  sermons  with  which  he  searched 
men's  souls  were  all  written,  and  frequently 
"  there  was  such  a  breathing  of  distress  and 
weeping,"  as  he  read  them  from  manuscript, 
"  that  the  preacher  was  obliged  to  speak  to  the 
people  and  desire  silence  that  he  might  be 
heard."     Sin,  Hell,    and   Eternal    Damnation 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  373 

formed  the  subjects  of  these  discourses.  The 
success  of  their  appeal  arose  very  largely  from 
the  fact  that  the  people  at  whom  they  were 
aimed  believed  in  the  things  of  which  Edwards 
wrote.  Thus  the  explanation  of  this  preacher's 
power  is  precisely  the  same  as  the  explanation 
of  the  remarkable  sales  attained  by  Wiggles- 
worth's  Day  of  Doom.  If  you  happened  to 
think  it  true,  you  would  be  greatly  impressed  by 
being  told:  "  God  holds  you  over  the  pit  of  hell 
much  as  one  holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome 
insect  over  the  fire.  .  .  .  You  are  ten  thousand 
times  more  abominable  in  his  eyes,  than  the 
most  hateful  venomous  serpent  is  in  ours.**  * 

To  attribute  to  the  Boston  of  Edwards*  era 
the  tales  of  Mother  Goose  would  be  exceedingly 
interesting;  and  many  writers  have  not  hesi- 
tated to  make  this  claim,  classing  Elizabeth 
Vergoose,  who  once  really  lived  in  the  leading 
city  of  New  England,  with  Aesop,  Perrault, 
La  Fontaine,  Anderson,  Defoe,  and  the  brothers 
Grimm  as  a  writer  of  imaginative  tales  for 
children.  All  because  John  Fleet  Eliot,  great- 
grandson  of  Thomas  Fleet,  the  Boston  printer, 
in  1860  published  in  the  Boston  Transcript  a 
wholly  unsupported  statement  that  these  im- 
mortal rhymes  had  been  written  by  his  an- 
cestress, Mrs.  Vergoose,  basing  his  claim  on  the 
fact  that  Edward  A.  Crowninshield  of  Boston 

1  Works  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  VII,  p.  170. 


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374  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

thought  he  had  once  seen  in  the  library  of  the 
Antiquarian  Society  at  Worcester  a  first  edition 
of  the  "  Melodies  "  put  out  by  Thomas  Fleet 
in  1719!  Mr.  Crowninshield  had  died  when  Mr. 
Eliot's  article  was  published,  and  thorough  and 
repeated  search  of  the  library  has  failed  to  re- 
veal to  the  eye  of  any  other  person  this  rather 
important  piece  of  evidence.  So  that  there 
appears  to  be  not  the  slightest  real  foundation 
for  what  we  may  as  well  brand  at  once  as  a 
highly  interesting  myth.  Those  who  care  to  ex- 
amine all  the  evidence  and  puncture  this  fiction 
for  themselves  are  referred  to  the  little  volume 
in  which  William  II.  Whitmore  threshed  out  the 
subject  thoroughly  some  twenty  odd  years  ago. 
Dismissing  entirely  the  idea  that  Mother 
Goose  was  a  name  which  originated  in  Boston 
or  that  the  melodies  proceeded  in  any  measure 
from  either  the  brain  or  the  pen  of  Elizabeth 
Goose  or  Vergoose,  mother-in-law  of  Thomas 
Fleet,  the  Boston  printer,  Mr.  Whitinore  shows 
in  his  book  that  the  great  vogue  of  the  "  Melo- 
dies "  in  this  country  may  be  clearly  traced  to 
an  edition  put  out  by  Munroe  and  Francis  of 
Boston  about  1825.  Isaiah  Thomas,  however, 
had  previously  printed  several  less  well-known 
editions  of  these  "  sonnets  from  the  cradle  ", 
as  he  called  them,  copying  his  text,  in  all  proba- 
bility, from  an  edition  put  out  by  John  Newbery, 
the   famous   English   publisher   of  story-books 


■ 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  375 

for  children,  about  1760.  Newbery's  test  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  translation  from  the  French 
"  Nursery  Tales  "  of  Charles  Perrault,  which  first 
came  out  in  1695.  For  its  frontispiece,  this 
book  had  a  picture  of  an  old  woman  spinning 
and  telling  tales  to  a  man,  a  girl,  a  little  boy, 
and  a  cat.  On  a  placard  is  written:  "  Contes  de 
Ma  Mere  Loye."  Mere  Oye  or  Mother  Goose 
is  thus  seen  to  be  a  cherished  possession  of 
French  folk-lore;  Thomas  Fleet's  great-grandson 
would  never  have  dared  to  claim  her  for  New 
England  had  Andrew  Lang  been  lurking  any- 
where about.1 

There  was  little  attempt  to  lure  Puritan 
children  to  the  reading  of  books  by  bestowing 
attractive  titles  ■  on  the  volumes  offered  them. 
One  advertisement  I  have  seen  describes  a  cer- 
tain work  as  "  in  easey  verse  Very  Suitable  for 
children,  entitled  The  Prodigal  Daughter  or 
The  Disobedient  Lady  Reclaimed:  adorned 
with  curious  cuts,  Price  Sixpence."  The  versa- 
tile Cotton  Mather  supplied  "  Spiritual  Milk 
for  Boston  Babes  in  Either  England:    Drawn 

1  See  the  Oxford  (1888)  edition  of  Perrault. 

1  Yet  as  this  book  is  passing  through  the  press,  I  hare  discovered, 
in  the  Boston  Public  Library,  "  The  Famous  Tommy  Thumb  Little 
Story-Book,"  published  in  1771  at  Marlborough  Street,  Boston, 
at  the  back  of  which,  and  described  ss  "  pretty  stories  that  may  be 
sung  or  told,"  are  nine  rhymes  usually  found  in  Mother  Goose  col- 
lections: the  verses  about  the  "  wondrous  wise  "  man;  the  rhyme 
concerning  three  children  sliding  on  ice;  Cock  Bobbin  (sic);  "When 
I  was  a  Little  Boy  " ;  "  0  my  Kitten  " ;  "  This  Pig  went  to  Market  "; 
"  The  Sow  came  in  with  a  Saddle  ";  "  Boys  ana  Girls,  Come  out  to 
Play  ";  and  "  Little  Boy  Blue." 


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376 


SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


out  of  the  Breasts  of  both  Testaments  for  their 
Souls  Nourishment. " 

It  was  nearly  a  century  after  Mather's  time 
before  Isaiah  Thomas,  stretching  the  truth  a 
little,  advertised  as  "  books  Suitable  for  Chil- 
dren of  all  ages":  "Tom  Jones  Abridged", 
"  Peregrine  Pickle  Abridged  ",  "  Vice  in  Its 
Proper  Shape  ",  "  The  Sugar  Plumb  ",  "  Bag  of 
Nuts  Ready  Crack'd  ",  "  Jacky  Dandy  ",  and 
the  "  History  of  Billy  and  Polly  Friendly  ". 
At  the  same  time  he  offered  as  "  Chapman's 
Books  for  the  Edification  and  Amusement  of 
young  Men  and  Women  who  are  not  able  to 
Purchase  those  of  a  Higher  Price  ", "  The  Amours 
and  Adventures  of  Two  English  Gentlemen  In 
Italy  ",  "  Fifteen  Comforts  of  Matrimony  ", 
and  "  Laugh  And  Be  Fat."  Mrs.  Shelton  says 
that  not  long  after  this,  the  "  book-closet "  of 
the  Salt  Box  House  increased  in  wealth  and 
variety  by  the  addition  of  "  The  Stories  of 
Sinbad  and  Aladdin  ",  "  The  History  of  Miss 
Betsey  Thoughtless",  "Theodore;  or,  the 
Gamester's  Progress",  "Charlotte  Temple", 
and  "The  Coquette;  or,  the  History  of  Eliza 
Wharton,  a  Novel  Founded  on  Fact ",  —  all 
of  which  lightened  the  heavier  reading  of  "  Ex- 
ercises of  the  Heart,  by  the  Late  Pious  and  In- 
genious Mrs.  Rowe  ",  "  Lockhart's  History  of 
Scotland  ",  "  Josephus  ",  and  the  serious  books 
of  the  day. 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  377 

It  would  thus  appear  that  by  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  "aesthetical 
thaw"  had  reached  Connecticut.  The  day  of 
Bryant  and  Washington  Irving  approaches. 


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SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   OCCASIONAL   JOURNEY 

TO  go  on  a  journey  was  a  very  serious 
matter  in  old  New  England  days  —  so 
serious  that  prayers  were  wont  to  be 
offered  in  church  for  the  traveler's  safe  return, 
and  public  thanksgiving  made  when  the  trip 
had  been  successfully  accomplished.  There 
was,  indeed,  much  more  truth  than  poetry  in 
the  lines  written  by  Madam  Sarah  Knight,  that 
"  fearfull  female  travailler ",  on  the  window- 
pane  of  the  house  in  Boston's  North  End  after- 
wards occupied  by  Doctor  Samuel  Mather: 

"  Through  many  toils  and  many  frights 
I  have  returned  poor  Sarah  Knights 
Over  great  rocks  and  many  stones 
God  has  preserv'd  from  fractured  bones." 

Sarah  Knight's  own  account  *  of  her  journey 
is  a  classic.  Born  in  1666,  she  found  it  necessary, 
when  about  thirty-eight  years  old,  to  make  the 
then  "  perilous  journey  "  to  New  York,  for  the 

'  "  Journey  from  Boston  t«  New  York,"  92  pp.:  Albany.     Little, 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  379 

sake  of  adjusting  some  property  interests.  The 
time  was  that  of  some  of  the  most  frightful  In- 
dian massacres  New  England  had  ever  known, 
and  to  set  forth,  on  horseback,  to  make  this 
difficult  trip  might  well  have  tried  the  cour- 
age of  a  strong  man;  unusual,  indeed,  must 
needs  be  the  pluck  of  the  woman  who  would 
attempt  the  feat.  Sarah  Knight  did  attempt 
it,  however,  spending  most  of  the  time  from 
October  2  to  December  6,  1704,  on  the  road. 

The  first  night  of  her  journey  she  rode  until 
very  late,  in  order  to  "  overtake  the  post."  The 
post  from  Boston  to  New  York  went  once  a 
week  in  the  summer  at  this  period  and  in  the 
winter  only  once  a  fortnight.  Apparently  it 
was  on  "  winter  schedule  "  at  the  time  of  the 
intrepid  Sarah's  journey.  At  Billings's,  a 
tavern  twelve  miles  beyond  Dedham,  where 
she  passed  this  first  night  away  from  home,  she 
was  greeted  by  the  eldest  daughter  of  her  host 
thus:  "Law  for  mee  —  what  in  the  world 
brings  you  here  at  this  time  a  night?  I  never 
see  a  woman  on  the  road  so  Dreadfull  late,  in 
all  the  days  of  my  versall  life.  Who  are  you? 
Where  are  you  going?  ...  I  told  her  she 
treated  me  very  Rudely  and  I  did  not  think  it 
my  duty  to  answer  her  unmannerly  Questions. 
But  to  gett  ridd  of  them  I  told  her  I  come  there 
to  have  the  Posts  company  with  me  to-morrow 
on  my  Journey  &c." 


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380  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

Nothing  about  the  Journal  is  more  delicious 
than  its  vivid  descriptions  of  the  various  beds 
upon  which  Sarah  Knight  rested  her  weary 
bones  in  the  course  of  this  great  adventure. 
This  is  what  she  writes  after  the  first  night: 

"  I  pray'd  Miss  to  shew  me  to  where  I  must 
Lodg.  Shee  conducted  me  to  a  parlour  in  a 
little  back  Lento,1  which  was  almost  filled  with 
the  bedstead,  which  was  so  high  that  I  was 
forced  to  climb  on  a  chair  to  gitt  up  to  ye 
wretched  bed  that  lay  on  it,  on  which  having 
Strecht  my  tired  Limbs,  and  lay'd  my  head 
on  a  Sad-Colour'd  pillow,  I  began  to  think  on 
the  transactions  of  ye  past  day." 

On  another  occasion  her  room  was  shared, 
as  was  the  country  custom  of  that  time  (and 
indeed  for  many  years  later),  by  the  men  who 
had  journeyed  with  her.  Again,  her  sleep  was 
interrupted  by  drunken  topers  in  the  room 
next  her  own,  men  who  "  kept  calling  for  tother 
Gill  which  while  they  were  swallowing,  was 
some  intermission.  But  presently  like  Oyle  to 
fire  encreased  the  flame.  I  set  my  Candle  on  a 
chest  by  the  bedside,  and  setting  up  fell  to  my 
old  way  of  composing  my  Resentments  in  the 
following  manner: 

"  I  ask  thy  aid  O  Potent  Rum 
To  charm  these  wrangling  Topers  Dum 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  381 

Thou  hast  their  Giddy  Brains  possest 
The  man  confounded  with  the  Beast 
And  I,  poor  I,  can  get  no  rest 
Intoxicate  them  with  thy  fumes 
O  still  their  Tongues  till  morning  comes. 

And  I  know  not  but  my  wishes  took  effect 
for  the  dispute  soon  ended  with  tother  Dram." 

Bridges  across  rivers  were  almost  unknown 
in  New  England  of  this  early  date,  so  that  on 
more  than  one  occasion  Madam  Knight  had  to 
trust  herself  to  an  Indian  canoe.  Lovers  of  this 
ticklish  craft  will  appreciate  the  following  de- 
scription of  our  traveler's  sensations: 

"The  Cannoo  was  very  small  &  shallow  so 
that  when  we  were  in  she  seemd  redy  to  take 
in  water  which  greatly  terrify'd  me,  and  caused 
me  to  be  very  circumspect,  sitting  with  my 
hands  fast  on  each  side,  my  eyes  stedy,  not 
daring  so  much  as  to  lodge  my  tongue  a  hairs 
breadth  more  on  one  side  of  my  mouth  than 
tother,  nor  so  much  as  think  on  Lotts  wife,  for  the 
very  thought  would  have  oversett  our  wherey." 

In  later  life  Madam  Knight  went  herself  into 
the  business  of  tavern-keeping;  on  which  ac- 
count her  comments  on  the  food  served  at  the 
various  ordinaries  at  which  she  stopped  is  of 
particular  interest.    She  says: 

"  Landlady  told  us  shee  had  some  mutton 
which  shee  would  broil.  In  a  little  time  she 
bro't  it  in  but  it  being  pickled  and  my  Guide 


zeacy  Google 


382  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

said  it  smelt  strong  of  head-sause  we  left  it  and 
paid  six  pence  apiece  for  our  dinners  which  was 
only  smell."  Again,  "  Having  call'd  for  some- 
thing to  eat  the  woman  bro't  in  a  Twisted  thing 
like  a  cable,  but  something  whiter,  laying  it  on 
the  bord,  tugg'd  for  life  to  bring  it  into  capacity 
to  spread;  which  having  with  great  pains  ac- 
complished shee  served  a  dish  of  Pork  and 
Cabage  I  supose  the  remains  of  Dinner.  Th> 
sauce  was  of  deep  purple  which  I  tho't  wi 
boiled  in  her  dye  Kettle;  the  bread  was  Indian 
and  everything  on  the  Table  service  agreeable 
to  these.  I  being  hungry  gott  a  little  down,  but 
my  stomach  was  soon  eloy'd  and  what  cabage 
I  swallowed  served  me  for  a  Cudd  the  whole 
day  after." 

Pumpkins  in  every  style  were  offered  to  01 
traveler,  but  not  being  country-born,  she  hj 
no  zest  for  this  staple  of  the  "  times  wherein 
old  Pompion  was  a  saint  "  and  so  refused  the 
"  pumpkin  sause  and   pumpkin  bred  "   which 
she  everywhere  encountered.    Nor  did  she  en- 
joy sitting  at  table  with  the  slaves  of  her  Con- 
necticut hosts.    "  Into  the  dish  goes  the  bli 
Hoof  as  freely  as  the  white  hand  ",  she  recoi 
in  disgust,  her  criticism,  however,  being  aim' 
at  the  color  of  the  slave's  fingers  rather  than 
the  then  universal  custom  of  helping  oneself  b; 
dipping  with  the  hand  into  the  common  dish. 

The  steed  to  which  Madam  Knight  entrusi 


)ur 
tad 


i;;e;)yGoogIe 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  383 

herself  was  undoubtedly  a  pacer,  but  whether 
it  had  the  broad  back  and  comfortable  seat  of 
the  Narragansett  variety  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing.  Nor  can  we  say  with  certainty  what 
manner  of  riding-garments  she  wore,  though  it  is 
altogether  probable  that  she  was  arrayed  in  a 
woolen  round-gown,  perhaps  of  camlet,  made 
with  puffed  sleeves  which  came  to  the  elbow 
and  were  finished  with  knots  of  ribbons  and 
ruffles.  Riding-habits  were  then  never  used. 
Over  her  shoulders  she  very  likely  wore  a  heavy 
woolen  short  cloak,  on  her  hands  long  kid  gloves 
with  a  kind  of  gauntlet,  and  on  her  head  a 
close  "  round  cap  "  which  did  not  cover  her 
ears.  The  "  horse  furniture "  to  which  she 
makes  frequent  reference  in  the  journal  in- 
cluded her  side-saddle  and  the  saddle-bag  which 
held  her  traveling  wardrobe  and  her  precious 
journal.  We  of  to-day  cannot  be  too  grateful 
to  her  for  the  care  with  which  she  guarded  this 
colorful  record  of  an  early  journey  from  Boston 
to  New  York. 

For,  while  we  have  a  great  many  interesting 
accounts  of  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
century  journeys  in  New  England,  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  to  find  anything  whatever 
about  inns  and  innkeepers  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  We  do  know,  however,  that  as  early 
as  1630  Lynn  had  the  famous  "  Anchor  "  Tav- 
ern, which  existed  for  one  hundred  and  seventy 


Digitize  Dy  GOOgk 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


reen 

lary 

i  more 

day, 


years  and  served  as  a  half-way  house  between 
Boston  and  Salem,  and  that  in  1633  ordinary- 
keepers  in  Salem  were  forbidden  to  charge  mi 
than  sixpence  for  a  meal. 

The  New  England  inn  of  these  early 
was  an  institution,  it  must  be  understood,  not 
a  mere  incident  of  travel  and  wayfare.  Often 
an  innkeeper  would  undertake  an  ordinary  for 
entertaining  strangers  "  at  the  earnest  request 
of  the  town."  Very  frequently,  as  we  have  seen 
in  an  earlier  chapter,  the  inn  was  put  close  to 
the  meeting-house  for  the  express  purpose  of 
providing  a  place  in  which  worshippers  cou 
thaw  out  after  their  long  journey  and 
between  services,  of  the  ever-comforting 
A  whole  book  might  be  written  —  I  have  in- 
deed written  one  myself  —  on  the  evolution 
of  this  type  of  ordinary,  and  attendant  changes 
in  methods  of  travel  from  Sarah  Knight's 
to  1822,  when  the  journey  from  Boston  to  Ni 
York  was  made  by  stage  to  Providence 
by  steamer  the  rest  of  the  way.  The  fare  on  the 
coach  was  then  three  dollars,  and  the  forty- 
mile  journey  was  accomplished  in  four  hoi 
and  fifty  minutes,  thus  causing  the  editor  of 
Providence  Journal  to  write:  "If  any  one  wi 
to  go  faster  he  may  send  to  Kentucky 
charter  a  streak  of  lightning." 

Providence   early   became   a   thriving   coi 
mercial  center  largely  by  reason  of  the  bi 


urpose  01 
ers  could 
i  partake, 
■ting  flip, 
i — .„  :_ 


tizeaDy  Google 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  385 

ness  enterprise  of  the  famous  family  of  Brown. 
It  also  profited  greatly  by  the  fact  that  it  was 
a  natural  terminus  for  stages  and  packet  boats. 
From  the  popular  "  Crown  Coffee  House  "  of 
Richard  Olney  a  stage-coach  set  out  for  Boston 
every  Tuesday  morning  long  prior  to  the  Revo- 
lution, and  by  1793  stages  were  leaving  Boston 
and  Providence  on  alternate  days.  The  "  Old 
Farmer's  Almanack  "  for  the  first  year  of  the 
nineteenth  century  announced: 

"  PROVIDENCE  and  NEW-YORK  south- 
ern Mail  Stage  sets  off  from  Israel  Hatch's 
coffee-house,  corner  of  Exchange-Lane,  State 
Street,  every  Tuesday,  Thursday  and  Saturday, 
at  8  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  arrives  at  New- 
York  every  Wednesday,  Friday  and  Sunday 
noon;  leaves  New -York  every  Tuesday,  Thurs- 
day, and  Saturday,  at  10  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
and  arrives  in  Boston  every  Friday,  Monday 
and  Wednesday,  at  3  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

"  An  extra  stage  runs  every  day  to  Provi- 
dence, from  the  above  office." 

Providence,  it  will  thus  be  seen,  had  got  its 
good  share  of  the  increased  business,  which 
caused  Wansey  to  remark,  in  1794 :  "  Eight 
years  ago  the  road  from  Boston  to  Newhaven, 
a  distance  of  an  hundred  and  seventy  miles, 
could  scarcely  maintain  two  stages  and  twelve 
horses;  now  it  maintains  twenty  stages  weekly, 
with  upwards  of  an  hundred  horses;  so  much 


zeacy  Google 


ea  ann 
ing  be- 

e  thus 
some 
Mrs. 

Heist,' 

lying 


386  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

is  travelling  encreased  in  this  district."     In  the 
summer  of  1829,  there  were  three  hundred  and 
twenty-eight  stage-coaches  a  week  running 
tween    Boston    and  Providence,    besides 
local  stages  to  points  nearer  the  city. 

Of  course,  sightseers  among  others  were  thus 
enabled  to  make  visits  to  the  city.     And  some 
of  them   wrote   down   what   they   saw. 
Anne  Royall,   the  pioneer  Virginia  publici 
recorded  in  1826: 

"  Providence  is  a  very  romantic  town,  ly 
partly  on  two  hills,  and  partly  on  a  narrow  plain, 
about  wide  enough  for  two  streets.  ...  It  con- 
tains fourteen  houses  for  public  worship,  a  col- 
lege, a  jail,  a  theatre,  a  market-house,  eight 
banks,  an  alms-house,  part  of  which  is  a  hospi- 
tal, and  12800  inhabitants.  .  .  .  Providence  is 
mostly  built  of  wood  though  there  are  many  fine 
brick  edifices  in  it.  .  .  .  The  streets  are  wide 
and  regular  and  most  of  them  paved,  with  hand- 
some sidewalks,  planted  with  trees.  It  is  a  very 
flourishing,  beautiful  town  and  carries  on 
extensive  trade  with  the  East  Indies.  The  to' 
of  Providence  owns  six  cotton  factories,  two 
woolen  factories,  twelve  jeweller's  shops,  where 
jewelry  is  manufactured  for  exportation.  .  .  . 
The  citizens  are  mostly  men  of  extensive  capi- 
tal. .  .  .  The  citizens  of  Providence  are  mild, 
unassuming,  artless,  and  the  very  milk  of  human 

1  See  my  "  Romantic  Days  in  the  Early  Republic,"  p.  252  et  uq. 


Z 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  387 

kindness.  They  are  stout,  fine  looking  men; 
the  ladies,  particularly,  are  handsome,  and 
many  of  them  highly  accomplished.  Both  sexes 
.  ...  have  a  very  independent  carriage." 

An  independent  carriage,  though  not  of  the 
type  Mrs.  Royall  had  in  mind,  figures  promi- 
nently in  the  one  other  early  account  of  New 
England  travel  which  has  come  down  to  us. 
I  mean  David  SewalTs  description  of  the  jour- 
ney he  and  Tutor  Flynt  took  from  Cambridge 
to  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  in  June,  1754, 
by  "  chair ",  as  the  first  open  vehicles  were 
called.  Flynt  has  been  called  "  New  England's 
earliest  humorist ",  and  there  seems  no  reason, 
as  one  reads  Sewall's  account  of  this  memorable 
journey,  to  dispute  the  characterization.  Mr. 
Flynt  was  eighty,  and  Sewall  one  of  his  pupils 
at  Harvard,  when: 

"  He  sent  for  me  to  his  chamber  in  the  old 
Harvard  Hall.  Being  informed  that  I  was  an 
excellent  driver  of  a  chair,  he  wished  to  know 
if  I  would  wait  upon  him.  ...  I  replied  the 
proposition  was  to  me  new  and  unexpected  and 
I  wished  for  a  little  time  to  consider  of  it.  He 
replied,  '  Aye,  prithee,  there  is  no  time  for  con- 
sideration; I  am  going  next  Monday  morning/  " 

So  on  Monday  morning  go  they  did,  making 
Lynn  their  first  stopping-place.  There  Mr. 
Flynt  had  a  milk  punch,  the  afternoon  being 
By  nightfall   they   reached   Rowley, 


.^Google 


3M  SOCIAL   LIFE    IX 

whore  they  were  entertained  by  Reven 
Jedidiah  Jewett.  who  put  them  both  in  one  h 
the  only  accommodation  he  had  to  of 
Young  Sewall  was  admonished  by  his  tutor 
stay  carefully  on  his  own  side,  and  we  hare 
won!  that  he  did  so. 

The  next  day,  Tuesday,  at  old  Hampt. 
they  met  on  the  road  Parson  Cotton,  walk 
on  foot  with  his  wife.  Mr.  Flynt  informed  h 
"  that  he  intended  to  have  called  and  tak 
dinner  with  him.  hut  as  he  found  he  was  goi 
from  home  he  would  pass  on  and  dine  at  t 
puMie  house."  I'pon  which,  says  Mr.  Cott< 
"  We  are  going  dine  upon  an  invitation  wi 
Or.  Weeks,  one  of  my  parishioners;  and  (Re 
Mr.  Gookin  and  his  wife  of  North  Hill  are  lil 
wise  invited  to  dine  there;  and  I  have  no  don 
yon  « ill  lie  as  welcome  as  any  of  us."  Win 
imitation  Mr.  Flynt  accepted,  having  fi 
stipulated  that  Mr.  Cotton  should  hasten 
and  prepare  the  hostess. 

"  After  dinner,  while  Mr.  Flynt  was  enjoyi 
Ins  pipe,  the  wife  of  Dr.  Weeks  introduced  1 
young  child,  ahout  a  month  old,  and  the  twi 
of  Parson  (ittukin's  wife,  infants  of  about  t 
same  age.  under  some  expectation  of  his  ble 
ing  lty  bestowing  something  on  the  mother 
the  twins  (as  was  supposed),  although  no  rne 
tion  of  that  expectation  was  made  in  my  he* 
ing;  hut  it  produced  no  effect  of  the  kind.'* 


.^Google 


OLD  NEW  ENGLAND  389 

We  shall  hear  more  of  those  Gookin  twins. 
Mr.  Flynt,  being  a  bachelor,  was  regarded  as 
fair  game  by  ambitious  mothers. 

That  afternoon,  young  Sewall,  unfortunately, 
proved  himself  not  so  skilful  a  driver  of  a 
"  chair  "  after  all;  the  old  gentleman  was  thrown 
out  and  slightly  bruised  when  their  horse  stum- 
bled on  a  stony  road  near  York.  But  some 
court  plaster  and  "  two  or  three  single  bowls  of 
lemon  punch  made  pretty  sweet  "  served  to  re- 
store the  equanimity  of  the  travelers  and  we 
soon  find  Bachelor  Flynt  remarking  to  his 
driver,  as  a  young  gentleman  whom  both  knew 
turned  into  a  side  road  with  the  girl  to  whom 
he  was  paying  court:  "Aye,  prithee,  I  do  not 
understand  their  motions;  but  the  Scripture 
says  '  The  way  of  a  man  with  a  maid  is  very 
mysterious.* " 

At  Hampton  Falls,  on  their  return  journey, 
the  travelers  planned  to  dine  with  the  Reverend 
Josiah  Whipple.  "  But  it  so  happened  the  din- 
ner was  over,  and  Mr.  Whipple  had  gone  out 
to  visit  a  parishioner,  but  Madam  Whipple  was 
at  home  and  very  sociable  and  pleasant  and 
immediately  had  the  table  laid,  and  a  loin  of 
roasted  veal,  that  was  in  a  manner  whole,  placed 
on  it,  upon  which  we  made  an  agreeable  meal. 

"  After  dinner  Mr.  Flynt  was  accommodated 
with  a  pipe;  and  while  enjoying  it  Mrs.  Whipple 
1  him  thus:    '  Mr.  Gookin,  the  worthy 


.^Google 


390  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

clergyman  of  North  Hill,  has  but  a  small  parish, 
and  a  small  salary,  but  a  considerable  family 
and  his  wife  has  lately  had  twins.* 

"  '  Aye,  that's  no  fault  of  mine,"  says   Mr. 
Flynt. 

"  '  Very  true,  sir,  but  so  it  is.'  And  as  he  was  a 
bachelor  and  a  gentleman  of  handsome  property, 
she  desired  he  would  give  her  something  for  Mr. 
Gookin;   and  she  would  be  the  bearer  of  it,  and 
faithfully  deliver  it  to  him.     To  which  hi 
plied:  '  I  don't  know  that  we  bachelors  are  undi 
an  obligation  to  maintain  other  folks*  children 
To  this  she  assented;    but  it  was  an  act 
charity  she  now  requested  for  a  worthy  person, 
and  from  him  who  was  a  gentleman  of  opulence; 
and  who,  she  hoped,  would  now  not  neglect  be- 
stowing it.   '  Madam,  I  am  from  home  on  a  jour- 
ney, and  it  is  an  unreasonable  time.'    She  was 
very  sensible  of  this;    but  a  gentleman  of 
property  did  not  usually  travel  without  moi 
money  than  was  necessary  to  pay  the  immediate 
expenses  of   the    journey,    and    she  hoped   he 
could  spare  something  on  this  occasion.     After 
some  pause  he  took    from  his  pocket  a    silvi 
dollar  and   gave  her,  saying   it  was   the  onl; 
Whole  Dollar  he  had  about  him.    Upon  whit 
Mrs.  Whipple  thanked  him  and  engaged   sin 
would  faithfully  soon  deliver  it  to  Mr.  Gookin 
adding  it  was  but  a  short  time  to  Commencemenl 
.  .  .  and  she  hoped    this  was  but  an  earn< 


*e- 
ler 


.„=  .Google 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  391 

of  a  larger  donation.  .  .  .  Father  Flynt  re- 
plied, '  Insatiable  woman,  I. am  almost  sorry  I 
have  given  you  anything.'  " 

He  soon  forgot  how  annoying  Mrs.  Whipple 
had  been,  however,  in  the  pleasure  of  meeting 
again  the  wife  of  Reverend  Nathaniel  Rogers 
of  Ipswich,  whom  he  had  known  at  Cambridge 
as  President  Leverett's  daughter.  His  greeting 
to  this  lady  was:  "  Madam,  I  must  buss  you;  " 
and  he  gave  her  a  hearty  kiss.  Next  morning 
there  was  tea  and  toast  for  breakfast  and  when 
Mrs.  Rogers  asked  how  he  would  have  his  tea, 
the  witty  tutor  replied  that  he  liked  it  strong, 
"  strong  of  the  tea,  strong  of  the  sugar,  and 
strong  of  the  cream." 

To  realize  how  great  an  adventure  this  was  in 
which  David  Sewall  and  Tutor  Flynt  had  been 
engaged,  it  is  necessary  to  recall  that  carriages 
were  then  almost  as  novel  a  means  of  transporta- 
tion as  air-ships  are  now.  Jonathan  Wardell 
set  up  the  first  hackney-coach  in  Boston  in  1712, 
and  in  the  following  year  we  read  of  Margaret 
Sewall,  Stephen  Sewall's  daughter,  making  a 
very  difficult  journey  in  a  calash  from  "  beyond 
Lyn  to  Mistick."  In  1726  John  Lucas  of  Bos- 
ton is  found  advertising  the  use  of  a  coach  and 
three  able  horses  to  take  people  to  any  part  of 
the  country  passable  for  a  coach,  at  the  common 
price  of  hackney  saddle-horses.  This  charge  - 
was  for  the  animals;    in  addition  there  was  a 


zeacy  Google 


392  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

fee  of  twenty-five  shillings  per  week  for  the 
driver,  the  cost  of  "  coach  and  haroish  *'  being 
reckoned  "  as  one  horse."  "  Harnish  '*  at  this 
time  consisted  chiefly  of  ropes  and  was  a  some- 
what uncertain  commodity. 

Seven  years  after  Tutor  Flynt's  journey,  a 
"  large  stage  chair  "  or  two-horse  curricle  began 
to  run  from  Boston  to  Portsmouth  and  back 
each  week.  The  man  in  charge  of  this  enter- 
prise was  Benjamin  Stavcrs,  and  his  line  termi- 
nated at  the  Earl  of  Halifax  Inn  in  Portsmouth, 
kept  by  his  brother,  John  Stavers.  Ten  yean 
later  still,  in  December,  1771,  we  find  Benjamin 
Hart  advertising  that  "  he  has  left  riding  the 
single  horse  post  between  Boston  and  Ports- 
mouth and  now  drives  the  post  stage  lately  im- 
proved by  John  Noble.  He  sets  out  from  Boston 
every  Friday  morning  and  from  Portsmouth  on 
Tuesday  morning  following." 

Systematic  staging  between  Boston  and  Ports- 
mouth appears  to  have  begun  about  1796,  the 
pioneer  on  this  route  being  Benjamin  Hale  of 
Newburyport,  as  Seth  Paine  of  Portland  was  on 
the  lines  further  east.  Robert  S.  Rantoul,  who 
has  written  a  delightful  paper  on  "  Old  Modes 
of  Travel  in  New  England  ",'  sketches  in  fasci- 
nating fashion  the  careers  of  many  old  drivers 
on  these  stages.  Very  readably,  too,  he  hints 
at  the  experiences  they  and  their  passengers 

1  Essex  Institute  Historical  Collections,  Vol.  XI,  p.  1. 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  393 

encountered  as,  all  winter  long,  in  storm  or  by 
starlight,  they  left  Boston  for  the  east  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning:'  the  smoking  corn-cake 
for  breakfast,  the  chill,  crisp  morning  air,  lan- 
terns flitting  eerily  through  the  ample  stable, 
sleepy  horse-boys  shivering  about  the  door- 
yard,  the  sharp  crack  of  the  whip,  the  scramble 
for  places  in  the  dark,  the  long  dull  ride  before 
sun-up,  and  the  gradual  thawing  out  of  the 
passengers  as  the  side-lights  flickered  out  and 
the  orb  of  day  prevailed.  The  first  regular 
stage  between  Boston  and  Hartford,  and  the 
beginning  of  systematic  communication  be- 
tween Boston  and  New  York,  dates  from  178S, 
the  impresario  of  this  great  enterprise  being 
Captain  Levi  Pease,  an  Enfield,  Connecticut, 
man  whose  home  was  later  in  Shrewsbury, 
Massachusetts.  Pease  had  a  great  deal  of  grit 
but  no  money;  his  friend,  Reuben  Sykes,  who 
had  previously  driven  a  stage  with  him  from 
Somers  to  Hartford,  —  a  distance  of  twenty 
miles,  —  supplied  the  necessary  capital  for  their 
venture.  On  October  20,  1783,  therefore,  at  six 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  Pease  started  from 
Boston,  as  did  Sykes  from  Hartford,  in  "  two 
convenient  wagons."  Each  made  the  allotted 
trip  in  four  days,  the  fare  being  ten  dollars 
each  way.  Josiah  Quincy  has  left  us  a  vivid 
account  of  a  journey  in  one  of  their  "  con- 


fer Google 


394 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


"  One  pair  of  horses  carried  the  stage  eighteen 
miles.  We  generally  reached  our  resting-place 
for  the  night,  if  no  accident  intervened,  at  ten 
o'clock  and  after  a  frugal  supper  went  to  bed 
with  the  notice  that  we  should  be  called  at 
three  the  next  morning,  which  generally  proved 
to  be  half  past  two.  Then,  whether  it  snowed 
or  rained,  the  traveller  must  rise  and  make 
ready  by  the  help  of  a  horn  lantern  and  a 
farthing  candle  and  proceed  on  his  way  over 
bad  roads.  .  .  .  Thus  we  travelled,  eighteen 
miles  a  stage,  sometimes  obliged  to  get  out  and 
help  the  coachman  lift  the  coach  out  of  a  quag- 
mire or  rut,  and  arrived  at  New  York  after  a 
week's  hard  travelling,  wondering  at  the  ease 
as  well  as  the  expedition  of  our  journey 

It  were,  however,  a  pity  to  progress  too  rap- 
idly in  our  narrative.  The  stage  and  the  steam- 
boat came,  of  course;  but  full  many  an  interest 
ing  journey  on  horseback  lay  between.  For  in- 
stance, in  the  diary  of  William  Gregory,  a  young 
Scotchman,  who  traveled  to  Boston  from  New 
Haven  in  1771  to  transact  some  business  con- 
nected with  a  "  general  store  "  which  he  kept  in 
the  latter  town,  we  have  a  delightfully  lively  ac- 
count of  the  adventures  which  often  befell  i 
personable  young  man  while  "  on  the  road.* 
Wallingford,  Hartford,  Springfield,  and  Palmer 
were  early  stages  of  this  journey,  which  took 
place  in  the  golden  days  of  late  September. 


a 
se 

r.  ' 


joogie 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  395 

From  Palmer  our  traveler  "  sett  off  by  seven 
o'clock  rid  as  fair  far  as  Brookfield  and  break- 
fasted and  stayed  until  my  two  widows  one 
married  woman  and  two  young  girls  came  up. 
Kept  alongside  of  them  for  fourteen  miles,  but 
finding  they  would  only  be  a  bill  of  costs  and 
no  advantage  I  dropped  them.  I  jogged  on  the 
road  solitary  enough.  This  is  a  very  mountain- 
ous country  and  bad  roads.  Dined  at  Spencer, 
at  Whitmore's.  After  I  refreshed  my  horse  in 
the  pasture  I  pursued  my  way  towards  Worces- 
ter, along  with  two  Scotch-Irishmen,  who  were 
glad  to  hear  somebody  speak  broad.  They 
left  me  after  riding  the  three  miles  and  I  came 
up  with  the  five  women  once  more  at  Worces- 
ter. I  put  up  at  one  Howard's.  The  coach 
proceeded,  This  is  a  very  handsome  place  and 
county  town,  and  court  now  sits  so  that  the 
Tavern  is  quite  full.  ...  I  passed  for  a  rela- 
tive of  old  Parson  MacGregor's  of  London- 
derry, New  England,  which  caused  a  little 
more  respect  paid  me.  I  said  he  was  my  grand 
uncle  and  passed  well  so.  I  slept  with  a  man 
who  came  to  be  with  me  and  got  up  long  be- 
fore me,  so  that  I  knew  not  what  he  was." 

Having  paid  two  shillings  tenpence  for  this 
accommodation,  young  Gregory  pushed  on  to 
Shrewsbury,  where  he  "  baited  horse  and  self 
at  the  Sign  of  the  Lamb,"  and  then  traveled 
to  Marlboro,  where  he  dined  at  noon;   thence 


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396  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

to  Sudbury,  where  he  "  oated  Dick  ",  and  then 
"  stretched  along  towards  Watertown  within 
ten  miles  of  Boston,  and  put  up  at  my  good 
friend's  house,  Ben.  Learnard,  who  is  a  widower 
with  a  fine  daughter." 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  in  this  early  account 
of  a  "  business  trip,"  the  traveler's  frank  de- 
light in  the  company  of  women  —  so  long  as 
they  cost  him  nothing.  Often  he  "  spends 
the  evening  with  several  agreeable  ladies  at  a 
tavern  ",  but  defers  his  supper-hour  until  they 
have  gone  to  bed ! 

Mr.  Gregory's  experiences  while  in  Boston 
are  very  entertaining.  Having  secured  private 
lodgings  "  at  one  Mr.  Coburn's  opposite  the 
Bristol  Coffee  House,  which  suited  me  vastly 
better  than  a  tavern "  (being  cheaper),  he 
sallies  forth  and  makes  the  acquaintance  of 
James  McMaster,  who  appears  to  be  in  his  own 
line  of  trade  but  of  whom  he  soon  wearies  by 
reason  of  the  fact  that  McMaster  "  brags  pro- 
digiously and  tells  of  the  thousands  of  pounds 
he  sells  of  goods."  Still,  McMaster  being  a 
Scotchman,  the  stranger  cleaves  to  him  in  spite 
of  his  boasting.    Of  September  22  we  read: 

"  This  day  being  Sunday,  I  proposed  going 
to  some  place  of  worship  ...  I  went  to  the 
new  Boston  Church  along  with  J.  McMaster 
and  heard  Mr.  Howard.  In  the  afternoon 
I  went  to  the  New  Stone  Chapel,  and  we  had 


D,9,t,zecDy  Google 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  397 

the  sweetest  music  I  ever  heard,  with  a  sermon 
from  Revelations.  This  church  is  veiy  hand- 
some and  well  painted  and  carved  in  the  inside; 
the  outside  making  no  brilliant  appearance. 
Before  we  went  into  church  we  caused  our 
legs  to  carry  us  up  to  Beacon  Hill,  the  highest 
spot  on  all  the  island,  where  we  had  a  charm- 
ing view  of  the  town,  harbor  and  shipping, 
the  place  taking  its  name  from  their  making 
a  light  here  upon  any  emergency  and  alarm- 
ing the  country  on  the  approach  of  danger.  .  .  . 
After  church  I  proceeded  home  with  J.  McMas- 
ter  and  drank  punch  till  the  going  down  of  the 
sun,  when  we  sallied  forth  into  the  street,  and 
then  proposed  going  to  see  Captain  Service. 
...  I  was  introduced  to  him  and  began  to 
count  kindred,  but  could  not  make  it  out, 
he  nor  I  knowing  but  little  of  relations.  .  .  . 
Half  after  nine  o'clock  I  got  up  and  bid  good 
night,  but  instead  of  going  home  I  found  my- 
self at  the  opposite  end  of  the  town,  two  miles 
from  my  lodgings.  I  tacked  about  and  after 
running  through  the  Lord  knows  how  many 
crooked  streets,  I  arrived  in  King  street  to  my 
great  joy.  I  smoked  a  pipe,  jawed  a  little  and 
went  to  bed." 

Inexpensive  diversion,  exactly  to  the  taste 
of  this  thrifty  young  tradesman,  was  provided 
a  couple  of  days  later  by  "  the  ordination  of 
Mr.  Bacon  and  installment  of  Mr.  Hunt,  both 


.^Google 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


into  church.  There  was  a  great  crowd 
spectators,  estimated  to  be  five  hundred.  My 
landlord,  Mr.  Coburn,  introduced  me  into 
a  pew  with  twelve  ladies,  four  of  whom  were 
married  women,  the  other  eight  —  good  God! 
how  can  I  express  it  —  were  such  divine  crea- 
tures that  instead  of  attending  to  the  du- 
ties of  the  solemnity  I  was  all  wonder  and  ad- 
miration. I  am  o'er  happy  this  afternoon, 
think  I  am  completely  paid  my  trouble  and 
expenses  in  coming  here.  '  Don  Pedro,*  my 
landlord,  said  when  we  came  home,  'Gregory, 
you  was  as  happy  dog  as  any  in  Boston  this 
afternoon.  You  had  eight  of  the  handsomest 
ladies  all  around  you  as  Boston  affords  and 
ladies  of  the  first  rank,  two  of  which,'  added 
he,  '  are  the  greatest  toasts  in  the  place,  ■ — 
Miss  Gray  and  Miss  Greenlees,  the  adorable.' 
Drank  tea  at  home  this  afternoon,  took  a  walk 
with  Mr.  McMasters,  went  into  a  tavern  and 
spent  the  price  of  a  bowl  of  punch,  came  home 
at  nine  o'clock.  McNaught  and  I  played  the 
violin.  We  were  very  merry.  Eat  my  sup- 
per, smoked  my  pipe  and  took  myself  to  the 
Land  of  Nod." 

Two  days  later  our  traveler  set  out  for  home; 
"  taking  the  route  out  of  the  south  end  of 
the  town  by  Liberty  Tree,  and  then  by  Old 
Fort;  from  that  I  jogged  on  to  Roxbury.  Pass- 
ing through   that   town  I  pursued  my  way  as 


of 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  399 

far  as  Dedham.  Then  I  made  a  stop  and  oated 
Dick.  From  thence  I  made  my  way  along 
and  arrived  at  Walpole  just  at  dark,  and  I 
put  up  at  one  Mr.  Robins',  just  nineteen  and 
a  half  miles  from  Boston,  as  far  as  I  wanted 
to  ride  to  divide  the  way  between  Boston  and 
Providence.    Here  was  two  fine  handsome  girls." 

Mann's,  at  Wrentham,  was  the  next  stop, 
and  there  he  had  breakfast,  having  journeyed 
thither  early  from  Walpole.  "  At  a  tavern 
about  nine  miles  from  Providence  bated  Billy 
and  Dick  and  then  proceeded  and  came  to 
Patuxet,  a  place  where  there  is  a  great  fall 
of  water  and  many  mills.  Here  is  an  excessive 
high  bridge,  and  not  quite  finished,  which 
renders  it  very  dangerous  to  pass.  At  this 
place  I  fell  in  company  with  a  young  lady  on 
horse-back  bound  on  my  way,  so  that  I  came 
along  the  last  four  miles  very  merryly.  I 
arrived  at  Providence  half  after  twelve  o'clock 
noon." 

There  being  talk  of  a  dance  in  Providence 
on  Monday,  young  Gregory  decides  to  stay 
over  in  that  town  for  a  day  or  two.  On  Sunday 
he  visits  the  college,  which  he  pronounces  "  as 
handsome  a  piece  of  building  as  any  in  America", 
and  on  Monday  at  seven  in  the  evening  pre- 
sents himself  at  "  the  assembly-room,  which 
is  a  very  handsome  one.  The  ladies  and  gentle- 
men drew  figures  and  my  figure  was  No.  2. 


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400 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


It  happened  to  be  the  finest  lady  in  the  room, 
which  was  Miss  Polly  Bowen,  an  excellent 
dancer  and  an  excessive  sensible  girl,  and  agree- 
able with  all.  We  were  happy  enough  this 
night;  broke  up  the  dance  at  one  o'clock,  saw 
my  partner  home,  came  home,  eat  something 
with  some  drink  and  went  to  bed."  On  the 
next  day  the  young  fellows  who  had  been  at 
the  dance  paid  visits  to  the  ladies  they  had 
met  there,  but  early  Wednesday  morning 
Gregory  and  his  fellow-lodgers  were  aroused 
with:  "Turn  out,  you  lazy  dogs.  The  wind 
is  fair  and  it  is  time  to  be  agoing."  For  now 
his  route  was  by  water  to  Newport,  —  a  four 
hours'  sail,  for  which  the  little  company  of 
fifteen  prepared  by  "  laying  in  good  stores  — 
roast  beef,  wine,  biscuit,  cherry  rum  gamon 
&c.  Also  a  bushel  of  as  good  oysters  as  ever  I 
saw  we  bought  for  a  pistareen."  One  is  not 
surprised,  after  reading  of  these  supplies,  to 
learn  that  friend  Gregory  was  "  plaguey  sick 
next  morning." 

At  Westerly,  his  next  lodging-place,  our 
traveler  slept  "  in  Mr.  Whitefield's  bed  ",  though 
not  very  restfully.  His  host  here  was  a  Mr. 
Thornton,  with  whom  and  his  wife  the  Scotch- 
man piously  talked  religion.  "  They  told  me 
Mr.  Whitefield  always  stayed  at  their  house 
when  he  came  that  way,  that  he  had  con- 
verted a  vast  many   people  thereabouts,   and 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  401 

that  I  should  sleep  in  the  same  bed  tonight 
—  they  having  taken  a  liking  to  me  by  the 
grave  deportment  I  put  on,  which  in  reality 
was  caused  by  my  being  tired  and  worn  out. 
At  last  sleep  catched  such  a  fast  hold  on  me 
that  I  fell  off  my  chair  on  the  floor.  Then 
says  I,  '  I  must  actually  go  to  bed.'  And 
after  bidding  a  good  night  with  gladness  to 
get  off,  I  slept  in  Mr.  Whitefield's  bed  as  they 
called  it,  according  to  promise  but  was  inter- 
rupted by  son  Johnny  coming  in  from  a  husking 
frolic.  He  entered  my  room  and  came  and 
drew  his  hand  across  my  face  which  awakened 
me.  I  immediately  bawled  out,  thinking  that 
old  Whitefield  had  come  from  New  York '  that 
night  to  disturb  me  on  account  of  my  pre- 
tended sanctity  with  the  old  folks!  " 

From  Westerly  to  Stonington  the  way  was  so 
rough  that  Gregory  rested  his  horse  and  him- 
self "  walking  and  riding  by  spells."  Thus  he 
made  his  way  to  New  London,  which  he  de- 
scribes as  having  "  a  pretty  good  town  house 
with  a  very  homely  old  church  and  meeting 
house.  The  latter  is  situated  on  top  of  the  hill 
about  half  a  mile  from  the  town."  To  the 
"  homely  old  church  "  our  young  friend  repaired 
the  next  morning  and,  Presbyterian  though  he 
was,  "  passed  very  well  having  all  the  prayers 


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402 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


by  heart  so  that  I  could  j 


i  well  i 


1  amen  i 
them.  Came  home,  drank  toddy  and  eat  a 
hearty  dinner.  Then  brother  Frenchman  [a 
chance  companion]  and  self  steered  for  the 
meeting  house  in  the  afternoon.  After  a  very 
tedious  walk  we  gained  the  holy  place  and  were 
invited  into  a  pew  by  the  door  flying  open.  A 
young  man  prayed  and  preached  but  how  he  per- 
formed I  cannot  say,  for  no  sooner  was  I  seated 
than  I  slept  and  was  in  the  land  of  forgetfulness 
about  an  hour.  .  .  .  When  honest  Frenchman 
gave  me  a  jog  I  was  quite  surprised  to  find  my- 
self in  meeting,  thinking  I  had  been  at  my  lodg- 
ings all  the  while." 

Actual  suffering  now  befell  the  sturdy  William 
by  reason  of  the  fact  that  he  had  no  money 
smaller  than  a  "  half  Johannes",  and  in  neither 
"  Lime,  a  small  place  upon  the  mouth  of  the 
Connecticut  River",  nor  in  "  Seabrook,  on  the 
opposite  bank  ",  could  they  break  so  large  a  coin. 
Killingsworth,  Guilford,  and  Brandford  were  his 
three  remaining  stops,  after  making  which  he 
arrived  once  more  in  his  home  town,  from  which 
he  had  set  forth  three  weeks  before.  "  New 
Haven  in  my  eyes  makes  as  good  a  figure  as 
any,"  he  writes  complacently  as  his  journey 
closes. 

Another  interesting  account  of  a  journey  in 
New  England  1  is  that  of  Robert  Gilmor,  a  young 

it  owned  by  the  Boston  Public  Library. 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  403 

gentleman  of  Baltimore,  who,  in  1797, —  being 
then  twenty-three,  —  came  north  to  travel 
and  to' make  sketches  of  places  which  appealed 
to  him  as  worthy  of  preservation  in  the  pages  of 
his  diary.  The  tavern  at  which  Mr.  Gilmor 
put  up  in  New  York  was  the  Tontine,  "  in  the 
coffee  room  of  which  the  merchants  &  indeed 
every  body  almost  assemble  at  night  and  noon  to 
hear  what  is  going,  and  see  each  other."  The 
route  he  chose,  in  making  his  way  to  Boston,  was 
by  water  via  Hell  Gate  and  the  Sound.  Most 
of  the  passengers  were  seasick,  but  Mr.  Gilmor 
"  had  a  good  appetite,  ate  heartily  and  could 
not  help  smiling  to  see  many  turn  their  languish- 
ing eyes  towards  my  plate  as  if  they  wished  to 
follow  my  example,  and  yet  the  sight  seemed  to 
disgust  them,  making  their  sickness  still  more 
revolting. 

"  Early  in  the  night,"  the  diary  continues, 
"  we  got  sight  of  the  Lighthouse  which  stands 
upon  the  island  of  Coanicut,  and  at  1  o'clock  in 
the  morning  we  landed  by  moonlight  on  the 
wharf  at  New  Port  quite  rejoiced  at  our  favor- 
able voyage  and  glad  to  have  another  oppor- 
tunity to  sleep  in  clean  beds." 

In  a  building  "  over  the  market-place  "  at 
Newport  a  small  theatrical  company  had  for 
some  time  been  performing,  and  consequently 
this  visitor  from  the  South  was  able  to  enjoy  a 
play  that  evening.    And,  at  the  request  of  Mrs. 


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404 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


■ 


Caton  of  Baltimore,  Mr.  Cooper  and  Mr.  Har- 
wood,  who  chanced  to  be  in  Newport,  "  took  a 
part  and  astonished  the  audience  with  their 
great  theatrical  powers.  Cooper  played  Romeo 
and  Harwood  shone  in  the  farce  of  '  Ways  and 
Means,'  in  which  he  played  Sir  David  Dundee. 

"  The  next  day  we  hired  a  chaise  and  rode  ovi 
the  Beaches  &  The  surf  broke  very  handsomely, 
and^we  stopped  to  look  at  the  grandeur  of  the 
scene.  .  .  .  From  the  beaches  we  took  a  circuit 
round  and  came  into  New  Port  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Island.  The  ride  was  delightful  and  lay 
through  the  richest  and  best  cultivated  country 
I  ever  saw. —  The  fences  were  made  of  stone 
which  had  been  cleared  off  the  land  and  inter- 
sected each  other  so  frequently,  that  when  we 
regarded  a  hillside  from  an  opposite  one,  it  ap- 
peared like  a  richly  coloured  map. 

"  Having  hired  a  stage  to  take  us  on  to  Provi- 
dence, five  of  us  set  off  early  next  morning,  and 
got  to  Providence  to  dinner;  after  which  we 
walked  over  the  Town  and  along  the  wharves, 
by  which  lay  many  vessels.  Tho*  this  place  & 
Newport  are  small,  there  are  some  of  the  richest 
&  most  extensive  merchants  in  the  United  States 
residing  in  them,  particularly  Providence.  Here 
lives  Mr.  John  Brown,  a  man  who  has  ships  in 
all  quarters  of  the  globe,  who  lives  like  a  prince, 
and  contributes  to  the  support  of  a  number  of 
industrious  citizens.     There  are  a  number  of 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  406 

elegant  houses  in  Providence,  chiefly  built  of 
wood  and  painted  in  a  neat,  handsome  manner. 
We  left  Providence  the  succeeding  morning,  and 
after  passing  through  Patucket,  Attleborough, 
Dedham  &  Roxbury,  arrived  at  Boston  about 
4  in  the  evening. 

"The  day  was  charming  and  when  we 
entered  the  town  it  had  an  elegant  appearance. 
We  passed  a  number  of  carriages,  in  which  were 
young  ladies  going  to  the  country,  and  we  were 
struck  with  the  Beauty  that  seemed  to  prevail 
in  New  England.  Hardly  one  lady  we  saw 
could  be  called  ugly.  ...  As  my  father  had 
recommended  me  to  board  with  Mrs.  Archi- 
bald *  during  my  stay  here  (he  having  been 
much  pleased  with  her  house  last  year  when 
he  &  my  sister  staid  there)  I  directed  the 
driver  to  set  me  down  there,  &  luckily  a  room 
with  2  beds  happened  to  be  unoccupied,  when 
Mr.  S.  &  myself  took  possession  of  it.  .  .  . 
Before  dark  we  had  visited  the  Mall,  The  Capi- 
tol, Beacon  hill,  &  almost  half  the  town. 

"  Boston  is  a  handsome  town,  filled  with  some 
well  built  houses  in  general,  and  some  very  superb 
ones,  though  mostly  of  wood.  The  streets  are 
however  bad;  being  narrow,  wretchedly  paved 
and  no  side  way  of  brick  for  foot  passengers;  my 
feet  were  quite  sore  with  traversing  the  round 

1  Mrs.   Archibald    kept  a  select  boarding-house  in   Bowdoin 


zeacy  Google 


SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

.  On  Friday  the  10th  1  hired  a  ha 


406 


stones.  .  , 

(of  which  there  are  a  great  plenty,  and  sonn 
very  handsome,  both  coaches  and  chariots) 
and  rode  to  Cambridge,  a  delightful  village 
about  4  miles  from  town,  to  deliver  my  letter 
for  Mr.  Craigie  who  has  a  very  handsome  resi 
dence  there,  and  was  the  place  which  Genei 
Washington  chose  for  his  head  quarters,  last 
war,  when  the  army  lay  in  the  neighbourhood. 

"  Cambridge  is  principally  the  seat  of  the 
University  of  that  name,  and  of  gentlemen' 
country  houses.  It  is  divided  from  Boston  b; 
a  long  causeway  &  bridge  of  l}4  miles  in  length 
which  it  is  extremely  tiresome  to  cross  from  its 
length.  At  night  it  is  lighted  up  by  about  BO 
lamps  and  looks  very  brilliant  from  the  Mall. 

"  At  Night  we  went  to  the  play  and    were 
tolerably  amused  but  better  pleased  with 
inside  of  the  Theatre  '  than  anything  else, 
Galleries  look  very  light  having  no  pillars 
support  them,  but  appear  suspended  in  the  air. 
I  think  this  Theatre  much  larger  &  handsomer 
than  the  one  in  Philadelphia.    There  is  another 
here  built  of  brick  in  a  very  superb  manner,  bi 
it  is  a  winter  one. 

"  Saturday  morning  Sherlock  &  I  hired  a  gig  & 

made  a  circuit  of  about  10  miles  into  the  country. 

.  .  .  After  dinner  .  .  .  we  passed  over  Charles- 

as  that  on  Federal 
the  Hfljmarket. 


ter 

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air. 
mer 
her 
but 


1  The  ihi'utn-  visil.nl  by  Mr.  Giltnor 
The  other  to  which  he  has  reference  wi 
"  Romance  of  the  American  Theatre." 


?ral  Street. 
I     See  my 


i;;e;)yGoogle 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  407 

ton  [Charlestown]  bridge  into  the  little  town 
of  that  name,  visited  Bunker's  hill  and  made 
many  grave  reflections  about  the  Monument 
of  General  Warren  erected  there.  The  next  day 
being  Sunday,  we  went  to  the  Protestant  Church 
in  this  city  and  heard  a  sermon  which  did  not 
come  up  to  my  ideas  as  a  good  one.  We  were 
pleased  with  the  manner  in  which  Dr.  Parker 
read  prayers,  and  were  in  hopes  he  would  have 
preached,  but  we  were  disappointed  by  his  as- 
sistant rising  in  his  stead."  The  church  here 
referred  to  appears  to  have  been  the  first  Trinity 
Church,  which  stood  on  the  corner  of  Summer 
and  Hawley  Streets. 

"  The  weather  here,"  continues  the  manu- 
script, "  is  very  uncertain,  in  the  middle  of  some 
days  the  heat  is  intense,  and  towards  evening 
it  becomes  cool  enough  to  change  the  clothes  of 
the  morning;  'Tis  now  the  14th  of  August  and 
were  I  in  Baltimore  I  should  call  the  month 
November  for  it  is  the  most  unseasonable 
weather  I  ever  saw.  The  wind  from  the  North 
West  whistles  down  the  streets,  while  my  dress 
is  no  avail  against  the  chilliness  of  the  blast. 
The  people  here  don't  seem  to  mind  it,  nor  do 
they,  I  believe,  feel  any  bad  effects  from  such 
changes;  they  call  it  charming  pleasant  weather, 
rise  at  five  in  the  morning  to  plunge  into  the  cold 
bath." 

Another  visit  to  the  theatre,  a  dinner  at  the 


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J  408  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Craigies,  and  a  dinner  at  Faneuil  Hall  in  hoi 
of  President  Adams  were  the  diversions  of  A 
Gilmor  during  the  next  few  days. 

"  About  306  people  sat  down  to  this  dim] 
[at  Faneuil  Hall]  and  were  not  the  least  crowds 
The  hall  was  decorated  in  a  very  handsome  ma 
ner  and  enriched  by  some  tapestry  of  the  Gobel 
manufacture  which  belonged  I  believe  to  the  la 
Duke  of  Orleans.  It  was  very  superb,  ai 
contributed  not  a  little  to  the  elegance  of  tl 
scene.  The  tables  were  furnished  with  eve 
thing  that  one  could  wish  for  the  season,  wi 
all  kinds  of  liquors,  and  a  company  could  n 
be  found  better  disposed  to  enjoy  the  festival. 

"  The  company  broke  up  early  and  went  I 
the  Theatre;  where  the  President  also  came.  ■ 
A  Stage  box  was  fitted  up  with  American  fla 
for  his  reception  &  when  he  entered  it  Continm 
peals  of  applause  burst  from  every  quarter 
the  house.  He  bowed  &  smiled.  During  tl 
performance  he  seemed  very  much  diverted  ai 
stood  a  tedious  play  out  very  well. 

"  On  Thursday  afternoon,  Mr.  Hay  (a  fellc 
boarder)  &  I  took  our  seats  in  the  Salem  Sta; 
and  at  Dark  arrived  at  Salem.  We  had  tir 
to  visit  several  places  in  this  town,  particulai 
the  wharves,  where  wc  saw  a  number  of  fi 
vessels.  This  place  carries  on  an  extensi 
commerce  &  had  lately  sent  out  more  East  Indi 
men  than  all  the  rest  of  the  United  States  < 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  409 

gether.  The  principal  merchant  here,  Mr.  Derby, 
has  just  built  a  most  superb  house,  more  like  a 
palace  than  the  dwelling  of  an  American  mer- 
chant. 

"  In  our  way  to  Salem  we  passed  through  a 
number  of  pretty  little  villages  one  of  which, 
Lynn,  is  scarcely  inhabited  by  any  but  shoe- 
makers.1 This  little  town  supplies  even  the 
Southern  States  with  women's  shoes  for  expor- 
tation. The  women  work  also  and  we  scarcely 
passed  a  house  where  the  trade  was  not  carried 
on.  A  woman  can  make  four  pairs  a  day  &  a 
man  has  been  mentioned  to  me  who  could  make 
double  that  quantity. 

"  We  left  Salem  about  7  the  next  morning 
in  the  Portsmouth  Stage.  ...  As  there  was  not 
room  for  us  all,  and  I  did  not  choose  to  be  left 
behind  I  agreed  with  M.  Hay  to  ride  on  the 
coachman's,  box  with  him  alternately  for  25 
miles,  when  one  of  the  passengers  left  us.  I  did 
not  expect  to  find  the  seat  so  agreeable  but  after 
a  little  I  preferred  it  to  an  inside  one.  After 
riding  45  miles  through  one  of  the  pleasantest 
countries  in  the  State,  we  got  to  Portsmouth  in 
the  evening.  ...  A  Mr.  Boyd  hearing  I  had 
come  along  with  M.  Hay  politely  invited  me  to 
dine  with  him  on  Sunday  &  to  join  a  party  on 
Saturday  evening  that  were  going  to  Piscataqua 


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410  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

bridge,  which  is  the  only  one  of  the  kind  in 
America  and  a  surprizing  work.  Its  length  is 
about  2300  feet,  including  a  small  island  which 
it  rests  upon  in  the  middle  of  the  river.  .  .  . 
While  the  company  were  viewing  the  work  I 
ran  about  half  a  mile  to  the  only  place  where  I 
could  get  a  tolerable  view  for  a  picture.  Then 
seated  on  a  rock  I  made  the  sketch  at  the  end 
of  this  book,  which  part  I  allotted  for  designs 
of  such  objects  as  struck  me  during  my  tour 
and  which  could  be  comprehended  in  a  slight 
sketch.  ...  At  4  o'clock  on  Monday  afternoon 
I  got  into  the  Stage  and  returned  to  Boston 
by  way  of  Exeter  &  Haverhill. 

"  It  is  something  remarkable  that  the  people 
of  New  England  in  general  have  adopted  a 
number  of  words  in  common  conversation  & 
which  they  interlard  their  discourse  continually, 
that  are  not  used  in  the  same  sense  by  the  other 
part  of  America.  At  Portsmouth  in  New  Hamp- 
shire particularly  I  remembered  the  following. 
If  I  observed  such  a  thing  was  handsome,  they 
would  answer  quite  handsome.  If  I  asked  the 
way  or  an  opinion,  the  answer  always  was  pre- 
ceded by  I  guess,  so  &  so.  .  .  . 

"  On  Friday  at  10  o'Clock  I  ...  set  out  in 
the  stage  for  New  York.  We  slept  the  first 
night  at  Worcester  and  got  to  Hartford  on 
Saturday  night  after  a  very  disagreeable  ride 
in  point  of  weather.  .  .  .  The  towns  through 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  411 

which  we  have  passed  in  Connecticut  are1  in 
general  very  pretty;  Hartford  is  among  the 
handsomest  as  it  is  the  Capital  as  well  as  the 
largest  town  in  the  State.  New  Haven  is  nearly 
the  same  size  as  Hartford  but  built  in  a  much 
handsomer  manner.  Yale  College  (the  prin- 
cipal institution  of  the  kind  in  the  State  &  per- 
haps in  America)  is  placed  in  this  town. 

"  On  Tuesday  about  noon  we  drove  into  New 
York  and  I  immediately  went  to  my  former 
lodging,  the  Tontine  Coffee  House." 

Because  this  journey  belonged  chronologically 
to  the  late  nineties  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  stage  in  which  Mr.  Gilmor  traveled  was  very 
likely  of  the  type  described  by  Thomas  Twining, 
a  young  Englishman,  who  visited  the  United 
States  in  1795.  This  was  "  a  long  car  with 
four  benches.  Three  of  these  in  the  interior 
held  nine  passengers.  A  tenth  passenger  was 
seated  by  the  side  of  the  driver  on  the  front 
bench.  A  light  roof  was  supported  by  eight 
slender  pillars  four  on  each  side.  Three  large 
leather  curtains  suspended  to  the  roof,  one  at 
each  side  and  the  third  behind,  were  rolled  up 
or  lowered  at  the  pleasure  of  the  passengers. 
There  was  no  place  nor  space  for  luggage,  each 
person  being  expected  to  stow  his  things  as  he 
could  under  his  seat  or  legs.  The  entrance  was 
in  front  over  the  driver's  bench.  Of  course  the 
three  passengers  on  the  back  seat  were  obliged  to 


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412 


SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 


crawl  across  all  the  other  benches  to  get  to  their 
places.  There  were  no  backs  to  the  benches  to 
support  and  relieve  us  during  a  rough  and  fatigu- 
ing journey  over  a  new  and  ill-made  road." 

Not  until  twenty  years  later,  when  the  Con- 
cord coach  (so  called  because  it  was  first  built 
in  Concord,  New  Hampshire)  came  into  use, 
was  there  anything  like  comfort  to  be  had  while 
on  the  road.  Yet  the  temperament  of  the  trav- 
eler then  as  now  had,  of  course,  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  the  amount  of  enjoyment  derived  from 
a  journey.  Because  I  have  quoted  Twining, 
who  had  nothing  good  to  say  for  the  stage-coach, 
it  seems  only  fair  to  add  that  John  Hellish,  who 
made  the  journey  in  1800  from  Boston  to  New 
York  by  mail  stage,  has  left  it  on  record  that  he 
derived  a  good  deal  of  pleasure  from  the  ex- 
perience. This  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
called  to  take  his  place  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning! 

The  social  opportunities  of  stage-coach  travel 
have  been  appreciatively  depicted  by  many 
sympathetic  writers, —  the  ruddy,  genial  driver, 
who  received  you  into  his  care  with  paternal 
interest,  the  opportunity  which  the  long  drive 
afforded  for  friendship,  flirtation,  and  political 
discussion,  and  the  family  histories  which  be- 
came known  as  the  stage  jolted  along  the  hilly 
roads.  One  thing  which  contributed  increas- 
ingly,   as    the    nineteenth    century    advanced 


eas- 
ned, 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  413 

to  the  pleasure  of  stage-journeying  in  New 
England  was  that  the  inns,  which  in  Sarah 
Knight's  day  had  been  wretched,  were  now 
almost  all  of  excellent  character.  Improvement 
in  the  means  of  transportation  had  made  it 
possible  for  the  landlords  to  obtain  adequate 
supplies;  and  the  will  to  serve  the  public  well 
had  long  been  theirs.  For  inn-keeping  was  re- 
garded as  a  highly  honorable  profession. 

The  excellent  landlords  at  the  Wayside  Inn 
in  Sudbury,  Massachusetts,  felt  themselves  to 
be  gentlemen  and  were.  Well  might  it  be 
written  of  Lyman  Howe,  the  landlord  here  in 
Longfellow's  time: 

"  Proud  was  he  of  his  name  and  race, 
Of  old  Sir  William  and  Sir  Hugh 
And  in  the  parlor,  full  in  view, 
His  coat-of-arms,  well-framed  and  glazed, 
Upon  the  wall  in  colors  blazed; 
He  beareth  gules  upon  his  shield, 
A  chevron  argent  in  the  field, 
With  three  wolves'  heads,  and  for  the  crest 
A  Wyvern  part-per-pale  addressed 
Upon  a  helmet  barr'd;  below 
The  scroll  reads, '  By  the  name  of  Howe.*  " 

Lyman  Howe's  pride  in  his  birth  and  in  his 
profession  recalls  President  Dwight's  oft-quoted 
praise  of  innkeepers.  "  Your  countrymen  [the 
English]  often  laugh,"  writes  Dwight,  "  at  the 
fact  that  inns  in  New  England  are  kept  by 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


persons  whose  titles  indicate  them  to  be  men  of 
some  consequence.  An  innkeeper  in  Great  Brit- 
ain, if  I  have  not  been  misinformed,  has  usually 
no  other  respectability  in  the  eye  of  his  country- 
men, beside  what  he  derives  from  his  property, 
his  civil  manners,  and  his  exact  attention  to 
the  wishes  of  his  guests.  The  fact  is  otherwise 
in  New  England.  Our  ancestors  considered 
an  inn  as  a  place  where  corruption  would 
naturally  arise  and  might  easily  spread;  as  a 
place  where  travelers  must  trust  themselves, 
their  horses,  baggage  and  money,  where  women, 
as  well  as  men,  must  at  times  lodge,  might  need 
humane  and  delicate  offices,  and  might  be  sub- 
jected to  disagreeable  exposures.  To  provide 
for  safety  and  comfort  and  against  danger  and 
mischief,  in  all  these  cases,  they  took  particular 
pains  in  their  laws  and  administrations  to  pre- 
vent inns  from  being  kept  by  vicious,  unprinci- 
pled, worthless  men.  Every  innkeeper  in  Con- 
necticut must  be  recommended  by  the  selectmen 
and  civil  authority,  constables  and  grand  jurors 
of  the  town,  in  which  he  resides;  and  then 
licensed  at  the  discretion  of  the  court  of  common 
pleas.  Substantially  in  the  same  manner  is 
the  business  regulated  in  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire.  In  consequence  of  this  sys- 
tem, men  of  no  small  personal  respectability 
have  ever  kept  inns  in  this  country.  Here  the 
contempt,  with  which  Englishmen  regard  this 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  415 

subject,  is  not  experienced  and  is  unknown.  .  .  . 
A  great  part  of  the  New  England  innkeepers 
and  their  families  treat  a  decent  stranger,  who 
behaves  civilly  to  them,  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  show  him  plainly  that  they  feel  an  interest 
in  his  happiness;  and,  if  he  is  sick  or  unhappy, 
will  cheerfully  contribute  everything  in  their 
power  to  his  relief ." 

In  illustration  of  this  last  assertion,  Doctor 
Dwight  cites  the  experience  of  the  Duke  de  la 
Rochefoucault,  who  was  over  here  in  1795  and 
was  taken  ill  at  the  house  kept  by  Captain 
Williams  in  Marlborough,  Massachusetts.  The 
duke  had  been  greatly  agitated  when  he  found 
himself  in  this  plight  among  people  who  had 
never  seen  him  before.  "  But  fortunately," 
he  writes,  "  the  family  in  whose  house  I  had 
stopped  were  the  best  people  in  the  world.  Both 
men  and  women  took  as  much  care  of  me  as  if 
I  had  been  their  own  child.  ...  I  cannot 
bestow  too  much  praise  on  their  kindness.  Be- 
ing a  stranger,  utterly  unacquainted  with  them, 
sick  and  appearing  in  the  garb  of  mediocrity 
bordering  on  indigence,  I  possessed  not  the  least 
claim  on  their  hospitality,  but  such  as  their  own 
kindness  and  humanity  could  suggest;  and  yet, 
during  the  five  days  I  continued  in  their  house, 
they  neglected  their  own  business  to  nurse  me 
with  the  tenderest  care  and  with  unwearied 
solicitude.    They    heightened    still    more    the 


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416  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

generosity  of  their  conduct,  by  making  up  their 
account  in  a  manner  so  extremely  reasonable 
that  three  times  the  amount  would  not  have 
been  too  much  for  the  trouble  I  had  caused 
them.  May  this  respectable  family  ever  enjoy 
the  blessings  they  so  well  deserve!  " 

The  "occasional  journey",  it  is  thus  clear, 
had  been  robbed  of  much  of  its  terror  during 
the  century  which  stretched  between  Sarah 
Knight's  journey  and  that  of  this  young  French 
nobleman.  For  nearly  a  half-century  more, 
too,  the  inns  became  constantly  better.  Then, 
when  they  were  almost  perfect  in  many  ways, 
they  were  forced,  by  the  passing  of  the  stage- 
coach, to  close  their  doors  for  what  looked  as  if 
it  would  be  all  time.  And  yet  to-day  many  of 
the  best  of  them  are  doing  a  more  thriving 
business  than  ever  they  did!  For  though  the 
age  of  the  stage-coach  has  passed,  that  of  the 
motor-car  has  come  in  its  place.  And  journeys 
in  these  craft  are  constant,  —  instead  of  **  occa- 
sional." 


]Dy  Google 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  XI 

SINGING  SCHOOLS  AND  KINDRED  COUNTRY 

DIVERSIONS 

MOST  of  the  recreations  of  country  life 
came  in  winter,  when  the  long  evening 
after  an  unhurried  day  afforded  ample 
leisure  for  a  variety  of  social  intercourse.  Thus, 
in  addition  to  quilting  parties  (for  women  only) 
and  fishing  through  the  ice  (for  men  only), 
there  were  husking-bees  and  spelling-bees, 
sleigh  rides  and  skating,  all  of  which  offered 
opportunity  for  the  circulation  of  flip  and 
roasted  apples,  mince  pies  and  cider,  as  well  as 
many  other  goodies  calculated  to  stir  the  genial 
current  of  the  country  soul.  Balls  there  were, 
too,  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
in  many  of  the  old-fashioned  taverns.  At  one 
of  these,  given  at  Red  Horse  Tavern  about  1750, 
Jerusha  Howe,  "  the  belle  of  Sudbury "  and 
the  only  daughter  of  Landlord  Adam  Howe, 
served  wine  and  pound  cake  which  she  had 
made  with  her  own  hands.  For  many  years  the 
little,  pale-blue  satin  slippers,  with  satin  ribbons 
plaited  around  the  edges,  which  Jerusha  wore 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


on  this  occasion  were  preserved  in  the  old 
hostelry,  together  with  certain  pretty  gowns 
which  once  formed  part  of  the  beautiful  maid- 
en's wardrobe.  Jerusha  had  a  spinet,  too,  —  the 
first  one  owned  in  Sudbury,  —  upon  which  she 
often  made  music  for  her  friends  and  for  her 
father's  favored  guests. 

But  not  for  the  singing-school.  That  came 
later,  for  one  thing;  and,  for  another,  it  was  a 
very  serious  enterprise.  The  primary  purpose 
of  the  singing-school  was  to  train  the  members 
of  the  meeting-house  choir  to  a  more  appreci- 
ative rendering  of  the  psalms  and  hymns  of 
worship.  But  of  course  love  and  laughter  crept 
into  its  solemnities.  How  could  it  be  other- 
wise when  most  of  the  singers  were  at  the  mating 
age?  That  Anna  Sophia  Parkman,  for  instance, 
found  singing-school  a  glorious  occasion, 
quite  understand  as  we  read  in  her  dia 
"January  20,  1778:  ...  go  to  Singing  Sch< 
at  evening,  Mr.  E.  B.  here  and  spent  the  evening, 
he  is  just  come  home  from  College."  Every 
day  for  a  week,  after  that,  there  is  joyous 
mention  of  singing-school  in  the  diary,  Anna 
Sophia  always  being  escorted  thither  by  Elijah 
Brigham,  whom  she  afterwards  married. 

Nothing  of  which  we  read  in  the  annals  of 
New    England    is    quainter    than    the    singii 
school,  held  in  the  country  schoolhouse,  wii 
rows  of  tallow  candles  planted  along  the  des] 


= 


.<«  .Google 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  419 

and  a  loud-voiced  master  pitching  the  tunes. 
A  highly  entertaining  sketch  of  the  singing- 
school  at  Oxford,  Massachusetts,  has  been  pre- 
served for  us  in  the  pages  of  an  old  magazine.1 
Oxford,  it  seems,  did  not  take  its  name  from  the 
English  seat  of  learning,  but  rather  from  its 
bovine  and  agricultural  interests.  And  the 
business  of  the  dairy  was  wont  to  be  enlivened 
with  psalm  tunes. 

"  But  the  memorable  singing-school  of  1880 
revolutionized  musical  matters  in  Qxfbrd.  Be- 
fore that  time,  the  meeting-house,  for  instance, 
had  square  pews,  both  on  the  floor  and  in  the 
galleries,  and  a  sounding-board  over  the  pulpit, 
which  was  always  just  going  to  fall  on  the 
preacher's  head.  The  minister  was  a  venerable 
preacher  of  the  old-school  orthodoxy.  The 
singers  sat  in  single  rows  running  across  three 
sides  of  the  meeting-house,  the  treble  fronting 
the  bass,  and  the  leading  chorister  fronting  the 
pulpit.  The  leading  chorister  was  a  tall,  bilious, 
wiry  looking  person  by  the  name  of  Peter  Bettis. 
You  should  have  seen  him  in  his  glory,  especially 
in  the  full  tide  of  one  of  the  '  fuguing  tunes  '; 
and  more  especially  when  they  sang,  as  they  very 
often  did,  the  122d  Psalm,  proper  metre, 

"  '  How  pleased  and  blest  was  I, 
To  hear  the  people  cry.* 

1  Monthly  Religious  Magatine,  Vol.  XXV, 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


On  the  left  of  the  chorister  were  the  picked 
young  men,  the  flower  of  the  Oxford  farms;  on 
his  right  the  girls,  in  neat  white  dresses,  all 
ruddy  and  smiling  as  the  roses  of  June. 

"  Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  the  sing- 
ing-school opened.  A  Mr.  Solomon  Huntington, 
who  had  taught  singing  with  immense  success 
in  the  neighborhood,  came  to  Oxford  and,  at 
the  Oxford  Mansion-house  sang  and  played  on 
his  bass-viol.  He  was  a  portly,  sociable  gentle- 
man, who  had  seen  the  world.  He  had  great 
compass  of -voice,  and  when  he  played  on  his 
violin,  and  represented  a  thunder-storm,  a  con- 
flagration, the  judgment  day,  the  battle  of 
Trafalgar,  and  several  other  catastrophes,  his 
hearers  were  constrained  to  acknowledge  that 
music  had  not  reached  its  grand  diapason 
Peter  Bettis. 

"  The  singing-school  opened  in  the  centre 
schoolhouse.  It  was  crammed.  Peter  Bettis 
was  there,  with  the  three  vocal  sides  of  his  quad- 
rangle. The  elite  of  the  village  was  there  in 
reserved  scats.  All  the  singers  in  town  came 
thither,  bells  jingling,  boys  and  girls  laughing 
and  frolicking.  After  the  school  got  fairly 
launched  and  organized,  Mr.  Solomon  Hunting- 
ton had  a  good  many  criticisms  to  make.  He 
told  them  that  half  of  them  swallowed  the  music 
down  their  throats  without  letting  it  come  out 
at  all.     '  Fill  your  chests  and  open  your  mouths.' 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  421 

"  But  now  Peter  Bettis  scarcely  moved  his 
lips.  On  the  other  hand,  the  more  Peter  shut 
his  mouth  the  more  the  others  opened  theirs. 
I  often  amused  myself  later  with  looking  over 
the  school-room  during  the  singing,  and  among 
the  odd  fancies  that  came  into  my  head,  I  rep- 
resented to  myself  the  Oxford  singing-school 
overtaken  by  some  sudden  judgment  and  turned 
into  petrefactions,  or,  like  Lot's  wife,  into  salif  ac- 
tions, some  with  their  mouths  wide  open,  some 
with  their  lips  screwed  together,  and  I  wondered 
what  the  geologist  would  make  of  it,  as  he  dug 
them  up  or  quarried  them  out  at  some  future 
age,  and  whether  from  this  single  fact  he  could 
thread  back  the  history  of  our  singing-school  and 
of  its  division  into  the  trap-door  and  the  lock- 
jaw party.  What  would  he  make  of  the  pre- 
served fact?  Would  he  not  say  that  one  part 
was  gasping  for  breath?  or  would  he  not  say 
they  were  trying  to  eat  the  others?  Would  he 
ever  suspect  the  truth?  " 

The  "  truth  ",  in  this  instance,  was  that  a 
deep-seated  rivalry  had  developed  between  the 
old  faction  and  the  new  among  the  singers.  For 
the  interior  of  the  meeting-house  had  to  be 
entirely  rearranged  to  suit  Mr.  Huntington; 
whereupon  the  conservatives  expressed  their 
disgust  at  the  desecration  of  the  old  place  by 
bestowing  the  appellations  "  hen-roost  ",  "  hay- 
mow ",  and  divers  other  terms  suggestive  of 


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422  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

rural  tastes  and  occupations  on  the  new  choi 
gallery.  A  young  blade  named  Seth  Hubba; 
having  been  duly  chosen  leader  of  the  reform 
party,  Peter  Bettis  never  sang  any  more.  After 
a  few  Sundays,  Seth,  stationed  in  the  main  aisle 
directly  in  front  of  the  minister,  led  his  followers 
in  a  fearful  and  wonderful  voluntary.  But,  the 
Sunday  following  that,  the  good  parson,  stro- 
king the  top  of  his  head  thoughtfully,  said,  after 
his  sermon  had  been  concluded:  "The  volun- 
tary can  he  omitted.  Shall  we  receive  t] 
Divine  blessing?  "  Subsequently  he  told  soiui 
one  that  he  thought  the  voluntary  dissipati 
the  solemn  impression  which  he  wanted  the 
sermon  to  leave  upon  the  minds  of  the  people 
and  so  felt  obliged  to  leave  it  out. 

"  Then  and  there,"    concludes  our  sprightl 
chronicler,    "  began    '  the    Decline    and    Fall 
chapters  in  the  history  of  the  Oxford  singin, 
school,  —  if  not  of  the  Oxford  parish  itself  . 
thus  deepening  my  belief  in  the  superior  val 
of  congregational  singing." 

Another  favorite  country  diversion  was  spel 
ing-school.     Spelling  as  a  branch  of  learning  h 
been  held  in  small  repute  until  the  publicatii 
in  1783  of  Noah  Webster's  famous  spelling-book, 
the  forerunner  of  the  dictionary  issued  about  a 
score  of  years  later  by  this  same  author.     Thi 
first  book  was  called  the  "  Grammatical 
tute,"  and  almost  immediately  after  its 


cer 

m- 

t 


Insti- 
publi- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  423 

cation  spelling  became  a  craze.  The  pupil  who 
could  "  spell  down  the  whole  school "  ranked 
second  only  to  him  who  surpassed  the  rest  in 
arithmetic.  Spelling-matches  became  a  common 
recreation  of  the  winter  evenings,  the  contending 
parties  often  coming  from  a  considerable  dis- 
tance to  show  their  firm  hold  on  this  elusive 
art.  Spelling  bound  together  more  closely  the 
interests  of  the  various  members  of  the  family, 
older  brothers  and  sisters  thinking  it  not  be- 
neath their  dignity  to  stand  up  and  spell  with 
the  youngest.  Horace  Greeley  was  the  leading 
speller  of  his  community  at  the  tender  age  of 
six  and  frequently,  when  it  became  his  turn 
once  again,  had  to  be  roused  from  the  sleep  into 
which  he  had  dropped.  After  the  spelling  at 
these  neighborhood  gatherings,  came  recitations 
of  poetry,  together  with  oratory  and  dialogues. 
The  dialogues  were  often  cheap  and  poor,  but 
the  oratory  was  the  best  America  had  produced, 
Patrick  Henry's  "  Give  Me  Liberty  or  Give  Me 
Death  "  winning  easily  as  prime  favorite. 

A  "  raising  "  —  erecting  the  frame  of  a  more 
or  less  ambitious  house  —  was  also  a  social 
occasion.  People  of  every  age  were  wont  to 
share  in  this  festival.  And  when  Jeremiah 
Story  of  Hopkinton,  New  Hampshire,  at  the  age 
of  one  hundred,  raised  the  frame  of  his  two- 
story  dwelling-house,  the  younger  people  of  the 
neighborhood   supplemented  the  event  by  a 


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424  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

party  at  which  they  "  danced  all  night  till  broad 
daylight  "  in  the  temporary  home  of  their  host. 

The  autumnal  husking  was  still  another 
excuse  for  joviality.  Here  young  people  of 
both  sexes  shucked  the  corn-ears,  paid  forfeits 
on  red  ones,  and  consumed  a  hearty  supper  In 
which  baked  beans  and  pumpkin  pies  played 
a  conspicuous  part;  dancing  to  the  music  of  a 
violin  or  "  fiddle  "  usually  closed  the  evening. 
Admiral  Bartholomew  James  of  the  Royal  Navy, 
during  an  excursion  on  the  Kennebec  River  in 
1791,  attended  a  husking  at  Vassalborough, 
Maine,  whose  joys  he  chronicles  thus  in  his 
entertaining  journal:  ' 

"  During  our  stay  at  this  place  we  saw  and 
partook  of  the  ceremony  of  husking  corn,  a 
kind  of  '  harvest  home  '  in  England,  with  the 
additional  amusement  of  kissing  the  girls  when- 
ever they  met  with  a  red  corn-cob,  and  to  which 
is  added  dancing,  singing  and  moderate  drink- 
ing." 

The  "  Old  Farmer's  Almanack  "  vacillated 
in  its  opinion  as  to  the  economic  value  of  the 
husking.  In  1805  we  find  Mr.  Thomas  writing: 
"  If  you  make  a  husking  keep  an  old  man  be- 
tween every  two  boys,  else  your  husking  will 
turn  out  a  losing."  Three  years  later,  on  the 
same  subject,  the  dictum  is:  "In  a  husking 
there  is  some  fun  and  frolick,  but  on  the  whi 

1  Navy  Records  Society,  1896,  p.  193. 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  425 

it  hardly  pays  the  way;  for  they  will  not  husk 
clean,  since  many  go  more  for  the  sport  than  to 
do  any  real  good." 

Joel  Barlow,  the  Connecticut  poet,  has  given 
us  in  his  poem  on  Hasty  Pudding  a  classic 
passage  on  husking  parties: 

"  The  days  grow  short;   but  though  the  falling 

sun 
To  the  glad  swain  proclaims  his  day's  work 

done, 
Night's  pleasing  shades  his  various  tasks  pro- 
long, 
And  yield  new  subjects  to  my  various  song. 
For  now,  the  corn-house  fill'd,  the  harvest  home. 
The  invited  neighbors  to  the  husking  come; 
A  frolic  scene,  where  work,  and  mirth,  and  play, 
Unite  their  charms*  to  chase  the  hours  away. 

Where  the  huge  heap  lies  centred  in  the  hall, 
The  lamp  suspended  from  the  cheerful  wall, 
Brown    corn-fed    nymphs,    and    strong    hard- 
handed  beaux, 
Alternate  ranged,  extend  in  circling  rows, 
Assume  their  seats,  the  solid  mass  attack; 
The  dry  husks  rustle,  and  the  corn-cobs  crack; 
The  song,  the  laugh,  alternate  notes  resound, 
And  the  sweet  cider  trips  in  silence  round. 

The  laws  of  husking  every  wight  can  tell  — 
And  sure  no  laws  he  ever  keeps  so  well: 
For  each  red  ear  a  general  kiss  he  gains, 
With   each   smut   ear   he   smuts   the   luckless 

swains; 
But  when  to  some  sweet  maid  a  prize  is  cast, 
Red  as  her  lips  and  taper  as  her  waist, 


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426  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

She  walks  the  round  and  culls  one  favored  beau. 
Who  leaps,  the  luscious  tribute  to  bestow. 
Various  the  sport  as  are  the  wits  and  brains 
Of  well-pleased  lasses  and  contending  swains 
Till  the  vast  mound  of  corn  is  swept  away. 
And  he  that  gets  the  last  ear  wins  the  day." 

Sweet  cider  was  the  only  drink  consumed  al 
Barlow's  husking.  But  Simon  Pure  huskings 
provided  "  Rhum  "  and  whiskey  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  guests,  with  the  result  that,  in  1828, 
Mr.  Thomas  felt  impelled  to  write  quite  a  little 
homily  in  dialogue  form  against  what  he  had 
now  decided  to  be  a  pernicious  social  custom: 

" '  Come,  wife,  let  us  make  a  husking,'  said 
Uncle  Pettyworth.  '  No,  no,'  replied  the  pru- 
dent woman,  '  you  and  the  boys  will  be  able  to 
husk  out  our  little  heap  without  the  trouble,  the 
waste  and  expense  of  a  husking  frolick.  The  girls 
and  I  will  lend  a  hand,  and  all  together  will  make 
it  but  a  short  job.'  Now,  had  the  foolish  man 
took  the  advice  of  his  provident  wife,  how  much 
better  would  it  have  turned  out  for  him?  But 
the  boys  sat  in,  and  the  girls  sat  in,  and  his  own 
inclinations  sat  in,  and  all  besetting  him  at  once 
he  was  persuaded  into  the  unnecessary  measure, 
and  a  husking  was  determined  upon.  Then 
one  of  the  boys  was  soon  mounted  upon  the  colt 
with  a  jug  on  each  side,  pacing  off  to  'Squire 
Hookem's  store  for  four  gallons  of  whiskey, 
others  were  sent  to  give  the  invitations. 


I 


key.     The 
ions.     The 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  427 

mother  being  obliged  to  yield,  with  her  daughters 
went  about  preparing  the  supper.  Great  was 
the  gathering  at  night  round  the  little  corn  stack. 
Capt.  Husky,  old  Busky,  Tom  Bluenose  and 
about  twenty  good-for-nothing  boys  began  the 
operations.  Red  ears  and  smutty,  new  rum  and 
slack-jaw  was  the  business  of  the  evening." 

Cotton  Mather  had,  some  years  previously, 
inveighed  with  characteristic  energy  against 
this  form  of  entertainment,  remarking  in  1713 
that  "  the  Riots  that  have  too  often  accustomed 
our  Huskings  have  carried  in  them  fearful  In- 
gratitude and  Provocation  unto  the  Glorious 
God."  Mather's  spirit  may  have  inspired  in  Doc- 
tor Nathaniel  Ames  this  pleasantly  satiric  pas- 
sage which  I  find  under  date  of  October  14, 1767: 

"  Made  an  husking  Entertainm't.  Possibly 
this  leafe  may  last  a  Century  &  fall  into  the 
hands  of  some  inquisitive  Person  for  whose 
Entertainm't  I  will  inform  him  that  now  there 
is  a  Custom  amongst  us  of  making  an  Enter- 
tainment at  husking  of  Indian  Corn  whereto  all 
the  neighboring  Swains  are  invited  and  after 
the  Corn  is  finished  they  like  the  Hottentots 
give  three  Cheers  or  huzza's  but  cannot  carry 
in  the  husks  without  a  Rhum  bottle  they  feign 
great  Exertion  but  do  nothing  till  Rhum  en- 
livens them,  when  all  is  done  in  a  trice,  then 
after  a  hearty  Meal  about  10  at  Night  they  go 
to  their  pastimes." 


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428  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

A  kind  of  first  cousin  to  the  husking  wi 
spinning-bee,  many  descriptions  of  whicl 
vivo  in  the  annals  of  old  New  England, 
which  occurred  on  May  Day,  1788,  at  Fair 
(now  Portland),  Maine,  was  thus  painstal 
chronicled  in  the  pages  of  the  local  newspi 

"On  the  1st  instant,  assembled  at  the 
of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Deane,  of  this  town, 
than  one  hundred  of  the  fair  sex,  marriet 
single  ladies,  most  of  whom  were  skilled  i 
important  art  of  spinning.  An  emulou 
dustry  was  never  more  apparent  than  it 
beautiful  assembly.  The  majority  of  fair  I 
gave  motion  to  not  less  than  sixty  wheels.  ] 
were  owupied  in  preparing  the  material: 
sides  those  who  attended  to  the  entertain 
of  I  he  rest  —  provision  for  which  was  ui 
presented  by  the  guests  themselves,  or  se 
by  other  generous  promoters  of  the  exhib 
us  were  also  the  materials  for  the  work. 
the  close  of  the  day,  Mrs.  Deane  was  presi 
by  the  company  with  two  hundred  and  tl 
six  seven  knotted  skeins  of  excellent  cottoi 
linen  yarn,  the  work  of  the  day,  excepting  t 
a  dozen  skeins  which  some  of  the  com 
brought  in  ready  spun.  Some  had  spun  six 
many  not  less  than  five  skeins  apiece. 
takes  tiiis  opportunity  of  returning  than] 
each,  which  the  hurry  of  the  day  rendered 
practicable   at    the    time.    To   conclude, 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  429 

crown  the  day,  a  numerous  band  of  the  best 
singers  attended  in  the  evening,  and  performed 
an  agreeable  variety  of  excellent  pieces  in 
psalmody. 

"  The  price  of  a  virtuous  woman  is  far  above 
rubies.  .  .  .  She  layeth  her  hands  to  the  spindle, 
and  her  hands  hold  the  distaff."  ' 

One  of  the  heartiest  and  most  characteristic 
of  New  England  farm  festivals  was  sheep-shear- 
ing. Nantucket  long  made  an  important  holi- 
day of  this  annual  operation,  and  in  an  old 
newspaper  I  have  found  the  following  vivid 
description  of  what  occurred  at  these  times: 

"  Sheep-Shearing.  —  This  patriarchal  festival 
was  celebrated  on  Monday  and  Tuesday  last, 
in  this  place  with  more  than  ordinary  interest. 
For  some  days  previous,  the  sheep-drivers  had 
been  busily  employed  in  collecting  from  all 
quarters  of  the  island  the  dispersed  members 
of  the  several  flocks,  and  committing  them  to 
the  great  sheepfold,  about  two  miles  from  town, 
preparatory  to  the  ceremonies  of  ablution  and 
devestment.  .  .  .  The  business  of  identifying, 
seizing,  and  yarding  the  sheep  creates  a  degree 
of  bustle  that  adds  no  small  amusement  to  the 
general  activity  of  the  scene.  The  whole  num- 
ber of  sheep  and  lambs  brought  within  the  great 
enclosure  is  said  to  be  16,000. 

1  Cumberland  Gazelle,  May  8,  1788,  as  quoted  by  William  Willis, 
in  "  Journals  of  Smith  and  Deane,"  Portland,  1849,  and  by  George 
Lyman  Kittredge  in  "The  Old  Farmer  and  Hia^' ' 


zeacy  Google 


I.T 


IS' 


it; 


430  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  As  these  are  the  only  important  holid 
which  the  inhabitants  of  Nantucket  have  e 
been  accustomed  to  observe,  it  is  not  to 
marvelled  at  that  all  other  business  should 
such  occasions  be  suspended;  and  that 
labors  attendant  thereon  should  be  ming 
with  a  due  share  of  recreation.  According 
the  fancies  of  the  juvenile  portion  of  our  cc 
munity  are  for  a  long  time  prior  to  the  ami 
June  '  Shearing '  occupied  in  dreams  of  I 
and  schemes  of  frolic.  With  the  mind's  t 
they  behold  the  long  array  of  tents,  surmouni 
with  motley  banners  flaunting  in  the  brec 
and  stored  with  tempting  tidbits,  Candida 
for  uioney  and  for  mastication.  With  the  min 
ear  they  distinguish  the  spirit-stirring  sque 
of  the  fiddle,  the  gruff  jangling  of  the  dru 
the  somniferous  smorzando  of  the  jew*s-ha 
and  the  enlivening  scuffle  of  little  feet  in 
helter-skelter  jig  upon  a  deal  platform.  A 
their  visions,  unlike  those  of  riper  mortals,  ; 
always  realized.  For  be  it  known,  that,  ini 
pendent  of  the  preparations  made  by  pere* 
actually  concerned  in  the  mechanical  duties 
this  day,  there  are  erected  on  a  rising  ground 
the  vicinity  of  the  sheep-field  some  twenty  p 
and  sail-cloth  edifices,  furnished  with  se. 
and  tables  and  casks  and  dishes,  severally  fill 
with  jocund  faces,  baked  pigs,  punch  and  cak 
and  surrounded  with  divers  savory  concomitai 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND 


431 


in  the  premises,  courteously  dispensed  by  the 
changeful  master  of  ceremonies,  studious  of 
custom  and  emulous  of  cash. 

"  For  the  accommodation  of  those  merry 
urchins  and  youngsters  who  choose  to  '  trip  it 
on  the  light  fantastic  toe,'  a  floor  is  laid  at  one 
corner,  over  which  presides  some  African  genius 
of  melody,  brandishing  a  cracked  violin,  and 
drawing  most  moving  notes  from  its  agonized 
intestines,  by  dint  of  gripping  fingers  and  right- 
angled  elbows. 

"  We  know  of  no  parallel  for  this  section  of 
the  entertainment,  other  than  what  the  Boston 
boys  were  wont  to  denominate  '  Nigger  'Lec- 
tion *  —  so  called  in  contradistinction  from  Ar- 
tillery Election.  At  the  former  anniversary, 
which  is  the  day  on  which  '  Who  is  Governor  * 
is  officially  announced,  the  blacks  and  blackees 
are  permitted  to  perambulate  the  Mall  and 
Common,  to  buy  gingerbread  and  beer  with 
the  best  of  folks,  and  to  mingle  in  the  mysteries 
of  pawpaw." 

Those  whose  interest  in  "  Nigger  'Lection  " 
has  been  piqued  by  this  tantalizing  allusion  to 
Boston  Common  on  a  day  when  oysters,  gin- 
gerbread, lobsters,  and  waffles  were  displayed 
on  every  side,  and  indulgence  in  them  urged  by 
genial  old  darkey  ladies  wearing  gay-colored 
handkerchiefs  of  the  latest  Southern  style,  are 
referred  to  the  account,  in  a  previous  book  of 


3y  Google 


432 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


mine,1  of  this  peculiarly  Boston  holiday.  Our 
concern  here  is  with  country  festivities.  And 
of  these  none  was  more  characteristic  than  the 
quilting-party. 

That  quilting-party  of  the  song,  following 
which  a  lovelorn  youth  "  saw  Nellie  home  " 
through  four  or  five  stanzas  of  mixed  metaphor 
and  sentimental  twaddle,  appears,  for  poetic 
purposes,  to  have  taken  place  in  the  evening. 
But  the  quilting-party  of  old  New  England 
was  an  afternoon  affair  and  was  followed  by  a 
tea  held  at  so  early  an  hour  that  the  women 
saw  themselves  home  without  any  difficulty. 
Apart  from  the  tea-drinking,  it  was  a  rather 
serious  piece  of  neighborly  cooperation  too,  — 
just  as  a  "  raising  "  was  for  the  men.  A  good 
deal  of  preliminary  patchwork  would  have  been 
done  before  the  party;  its  great  function  was 
to  fasten  the  outside  covering  of  the  quilt  to 
the  lining  and  its  soft  layer  of  cotton  wadding. 
To  do  tins,  the  women  grouped  themselves 
around  a  "  quiltin'  frame,"  raised  at  a  conve- 
nient height  upon  the  backs  of  chairs,  and 
stitched  diligently  the  whole  afternoon. 

Likewise  talked!  No  gathering  in  the  whoh 
year  compared  with  the  quilting-party  as 
gossip-f est.  For  because  the  work  demanded 
no  thought  on  the  part  of  those  familiar  with  the 
process  of  quilting,  and  because  the  participants 
1 "  Romantic  Days  in  Old  Boston,"  p.  92. 


i 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  433 

were  all  close  together,  facing  inwards  as  at  a 
square  table,  many  things  which  could  only  be 
whispered  here  first  found  breath.  But  the 
crowning  joy  of  every  quilting  party  was  the 
supper  afterwards,  with  its  tea,  pale  in  color 
but  really  strong,  served  in  the  hostess*  best 
china,  with  bread  and  butter,  hot  biscuits,  peach" 
preserves,  apple-and-quince  sauce,  doughnuts, 
mince  pie,  custard  pie,  fruit  cake,  sponge  cake, 
and  mellow  sage  cheese.  Whether  the  cause 
be  the  gossip  or  the  collation,  I  find  my  woman- 
soul  yearning,  as  I  write  these  words,  for  a  revi- 
val of  the  quilting-party.  Even  I,  who  abomi- 
nate sewing,  would  "  quilt "  for  such  rewards  as 
these. 

In  all  the  country  diversions  thus  far  noted, 
intellectual  interest  is  conspicuous  by  its  absence. 
That  element  was  first  introduced  into  New  Eng- 
land life  by  the  Lyceum,  the  earliest  example 
of  which  was  established  at  Millbury,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1826.  Within  five  years  after  that 
date,  nearly  every  village  of  any  size  had  its  lec- 
ture course;  a  very  interesting  chapter  might  be 
written  on  the  history  and  influence  of  this  new 
institution.  But  that  would  carry  us  beyond 
the  space  and  time  limitations  set  for  the  present 
volume.  It  must,  however,  be  observed  at 
this  point  that  the  rise  of  the  Lyceum  marked 
the  passing  of  the  various  "  bees,"  with  their 
concomitants  of  kisses  and  cider.    It  is  also 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


interesting  to  record  in  this  connection  that 
the  Millbury  which  boasts  the  first  Lyceum 
boasts  also  the  first  temperance  society. 

Tradition  tells  us  that  the  object  of  this 
temperance  society  was  to  prevent  its  members 
from  drinking  too  much!  The  organization 
met  at  the  schoolhouse  every  Saturday  evening, 
and  each  member  then  gave  an  account  of  his 
week's  indulgence;  if,  in  the  opinion  of  the 
majority,  any  had  overstepped  the  bounds  of 
moderation,  such  were  placed  upon  an  allowance 
for  the  week  to  come.  One  night  a  member 
related  that  he  had  abstained  entirely  for  the 
week  just  passed,  but  his  words  were  utterly 
disbelieved;  the  thing  was  regarded  as  im- 
possible in  human  experience.  And  when  this 
same  member  went  on  to  say  that  he  would 
never  drink  again,  his  good  faith  was  openly 
challenged;  it  was  believed  that  he  must  ta.k«; 
his  dram  in  secret!  But,  though  this  adven- 
turous soul  was  subjected  to  every  kind  of 
espionage,  he  was  never  again  discovered  drink- 
ing liquor.  Thus  he  helped  to  create  an  entirely 
new  standard  of  conduct  for  country  life  in 
England. 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  XII 

AMUSEMENTS   OF   THE   BIO   TOWN 

THE  sole  amusement  of  the  earliest  New 
Englanders  was  attendance  at  "  meet' 
ing  "  and  at  the  Thursday  lecture,  which 
provided  a  slightly  diluted  repetition  of  the 
pleasures  of  the  Sabbath.  Then,  in  the  fall 
of  1634,  Boston  experienced  the  excitement 
offered  by  Anne  Hutchinson's  discussions  of  the 
sermons  which  had  been  preached  the  previous 
Sunday.  One  of  these  weekly  meetings,  held 
in  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  own  home  on  the  site 
afterwards  sacred  to  the  Old  Comer  Bookstore, 
was  designed  for  men  and  women,  and  one  was 
for  women  exclusively.  Both  soon  became 
epoch-making.  For  the  talk  here  was  always 
bright  and  pithy,  the  leader's  wit  o/jick  and 
penetrating  and  the  topic  under  discussion 
theology,  —  the  one  subject  in  whicJb  ail  men  and 
women  of  that  day  were  deeply  interested- 

Hawthorne's  genius  has  conjured  up  the  soene 
at  these  first  Boston  "  CoDfeRBOM,"  as  we 
should  'all  them  to-day.  Thus  we  may  share, 
with  the  "  crowd  of  hooded  women  and  men  m 


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436 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


steeple  hats  and  close-cropped  hair  .  . 
bled  at  the  door  and  open  windows  of 
newly  built,"  the  thrill  of  this  new  opportunity 
for  social  intercourse.  Well  may  we  believe 
that  "  an  earnest  expression  glowed  in  every 
face  .  .  .  and  some  pressed  inward  as  if  the 
bread  of  life  were  to  be  dealt  forth,  and  they 
feared  to  lose  their  share." 

But  the  bread  of  life  was  too  precious  a  thing, 
in  old  New  England,  to  be  dispensed  by  any 
except  the  authorized  clergy.  Hence  the  speedy 
banishment  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson.  After  her 
day  Boston  sponsored  no  more  spiritual  and 
intellectual  orgies  under  the  leadership  of  ' 
laity. 

Then  it  was,  very  likely,  that  this  big  town, 
for  the  first  time,  took  to  dancing. 

The  savages  themselves  were  scarcely  mon 
fond  of  dancing  than  the  colonists  who  i 
after  them,  and  though  dancing-schools  were  i 
first  forbidden  in  New  England,  and  dancing 
prohibited  in  Massachusetts  taverns  and  at 
weddings,  we  constantly  find  allusions  which 
show  that  there  was  dancing  and  a  good  deal  of  it. 
There  is  extant  a  letter  written  by  John  Cotton, 
in  which  that  good  man  declares  that  he  does 
not  condemn  dancing,  "  even  mixt,"  as  a  whole. 
What  he  is  opposed  to,  he  explains,  is  "  lascivious 
dancing  to  wanton  ditties  with  amorous  . 
tures  and  wanton  dalliances,"  —  just  the  kind 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  437 

of  dancing  to  which  all  decent  folk  are  rightly 
objecting  in  our  own  day. 

By  the  time  John  Cotton's  grandson,  Cotton 
Mather,  came  to  be  a  power  in  Boston,  the  vogue 
of  dancing  had  so  increased  that  we  find  Sewall 
recording: 

"  the  Ministers  Come  to  the  Court  and  com- 
plain against  a  Dancing  Master  who  seeks  to 
set  up  here  and  hath  mixt  Dances,  and  his  time 
of  Meeting  is  Lecture-Day;  and  'tis  reported 
he  should  say  that  by  one  Play  he  could  teach 
more  Divinity  than  Mr.  Willard  or  the  Old 
Testament.  Mr.  Moodey  said  'twas  not  a 
time  for  N.  E.  to  dance.  Mr.  Mather  struck 
at  the  Root,  speaking  against  mixt  Dances." 

The  Mather  to  whom  Sewall  refers  in  this 
last  sentence  is  Increase  Mather,  who  had 
married  John  Cotton's  only  daughter,  and  the 
gist  of  his  sermon  on  "  Gynecandrical  Dancing 
or  that  which  is  commonly  called  Mixt  or 
Promiscuous  Dancing  of  Men  and  Women,  be 
they  elder  or  younger  persons  together  "  has 
come  down  to  us.  Characterizing  this  indul- 
gence as  the  great  sin  of  the  Daughters  of  Zion, 
the  preacher  exclaimed:  "  Who  were  the  in- 
ventors of  Petulant  Dancings?  Learned  men 
have  well  observed  that  the  Devil  was  the  First 
Inventor  of  the  impleaded  Dances,  and  the 
Gentiles  who  worshipped  him  the  first  Practi- 
tioners   of    this    Art."    Then,    knowing    that 


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438  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

Miriam  and  David  of  the  sacrosanct  Old  Testa- 
ment would  be  adduced  to  controvert  his 
arguments,  Mr.  Mather  continued:  "Those 
Instances  are  not  at  all  to  the  Purpose."  And 
since  in  those  days,  —  Anne  Hutchinson  having 
been  banished,  —  nobody  talked  back  to  a  minis- 
ter, we  find  Sewall,  a  month  after  the  preaching 
of  this  sermon,  recording,  with  the  tight-lipped 
terseness  of  a  man  who  has  gained  his  point: 
"  Mr.  Francis  Stepney,  the  Dancing  Master, 
...  is  ordered  not  to  keep  a  Dancing  School; 
if  he  does  will  be  taken  in  contempt  and  be  pro- 
ceeded with  accordingly."  The  two  generations 
of  ingrowing  Puritanism  between  John  Cotton 
and  his  grandson  had  developed  a  standard  of 
ethics  which  approved  this  kind  of  treatment 
for  those  whom  the  clergy  had  black-listed. 

Yet,  when  the  royal  governors  began  to  have 
their  way,  dancing  was  made  very  welcome. 
In  1713  Boston  saw  a  ball  at  which  those  of 
the  governor's  set  danced  until  three  in 
morning  —  and,  by  Revolutionary  times,  every- 
body who  wanted  to  was  dancing.  Even 
ministers  and  the  Baptists!  For  "ordination 
balls"  became  a  recognized  feature  of  welcom- 
ing a  pastor.  And  when  John  Brown  of  Provi- 
dence moved  into  his  new  house,  he  celebrated 
the  occasion  by  a  dance,  the  invitations  to  whi< 
were  printed,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day: 
the  backs  of  playing-cards. 


:  01 
the 
■ry- 

tlu- 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  439 

A  fashionable  dancing-master  of  Boston  was 
William  Turner,  who  afterwards  resided  in 
Cambridge.  Mr.  Turner  held  bis  classes  at  the 
corner  of  Tremont  and  Bromfield  Streets  and 
advertised  thus  in  Boston  and  Salem  papers 
just  before  the  Revolution: 

"  Mr.  Turner  informs  the  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men in  Town  and  Country  that  he  has  reduced 
his  price  for  teaching  from  Six  Dollars  Entrance 
to  One  Guinea,  and  from  Four  Dollars  per 
month  to  Three.  Those  ladies  and  Gentlemen 
who  propose  sending  their  children  to  be  taught 
will  notice  no  books  will  be  kept  as  Mr.  T.  has 
suffered  much  from  Booking.  The  pupils  must 
pay  monthly  if  they  are  desirous  the  School 
should  continue." 

When  John  Baptist  Tioli  came  to  Providence 
in  1768  and  announced  a  "  DANCING  SCHOOL 
.  .  .  where  will  be  taught  the  Minuet.  Double 
Minuet,  Quadrille  Minuet,  Paspie.  Gavotta. 
Alcuver,  Hornpipe,  Country  Dances  Lc  of  the 
newest  Figures "  he  was  very-  well  received. 
His  classes  were  held  three  days  in  the  week. 
ladies  being  taught  from  nine  to  twelve  a.  st- 
and the  hours  from  five  until  eizht  p.  u.  beinr 
"  solely  devoted  to  the  Instruction  of  Gentle- 
men." After  one  month,  however,  as  the  ad- 
vertisement adroitly  points  out.  "  Gentlemen 
and  Ladies  will  be  directed  to  a*  tend  together, 
on  every  Friday  Evening,  at  which  Tune  their 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


respective  Parents  inclined  to  Speculation  will 
have  free  access."  The  gentry  of  Providence 
appear  to  have  availed  themselves  liberally 
and  gladly  of  Mr.  Tioli's  instructions.  When 
the  Italian  left  the  town,  after  a  farewell  concert 
and  ball,  he  expressed  in  a  printed  card  deep 
gratitude  for  the  favors  that  had  been  shown 
him.  "  'Tis  with  Reluctance  he  quits  a  Place, 
the  Inhabitants  of  which  are  justly  remarked 
for  their  Politeness  towards  Strangers,  among 
whom  he  should  think  himself  happy  in  residing, 
did  not  Business  urge  his  immediate  Departure." 
Providence  people  continued  to  dance,  too, 
not  only  in  Hacker's  Hall  on  the  Towne  Street, 
where  many  a  gay  party  diverted  itself  during 
the  next  two  generations,  but  at  private  houses. 
The  "Cotillion  Parties"  held  in  Peter  S. 
Minard's  Washington  Hall,  beginning  about 
1825,  carried  on  the  dancing  traditions  of  this 
town,  and  from  sixty  to  ninety  young  ladies 
and  gentlemen  attended  these  gatherings  regu- 
larly. In  the  biography  of  Almon  D,  Hodges, 
who  was  one  of  the  managers,  we  learn  that  at 
these  festivities  "  there  was  dancing,  with  bu- 
glers to  punctuate  the  time;  and  a  supper  of 
cakes  and  pies  and  wine  —  as  many  as  seventeen 
bottles  of  wine,  costing  one  dollar  apiece,  were 
charged  in  one  bill;  and  there  were  carriages 
provided  for  somebodies,  perhaps  distinguished 
guests,  at  the  general  expense,"     Yet  the  busi- 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  441 

ness  management  was  so  good  that  at  the  end 
of  the  season  of  1826  there  was  on  hand  a  sur- 
plus of  eleven  dollars  and  fifty  cents,  which  was 
presented  to  the  Dorcas  Society. 

Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  also  had  its 
organized  dancing-parties,  held  in  the  beautiful 
Assembly  House,  which  Mr.  Michael  Whidden 
built  and  owned.  The  house  was  of  wood  — 
large,  long,  and  painted  white.  On  its  lower 
floor  were  three  great  parlors,  a  kitchen,  and 
an  immense  hall  and  staircase.  The  assembly- 
room  took  the  whole  front  of  the  second  story 
and  was  about  sixty  by  thirty  feet,  with  large 
windows  and  an  orchestra  over  the  entrance. 
Back  of  it  were  two  dressing-rooms.  Chande- 
liers for  wax  candles,  deep  cornices,  and  richly 
gilded  carving  decorated  these  apartments. 
Here,  from  the  days  of  the  Revolution  until 
Franklin  Hall  was  built,  about  1820,  the  flower 
of  Portsmouth  was  wont  to  assemble.  For  of 
this  town,  widely  noted  for  the  elegance  of  its 
entertainments  and  the  grace  of  its  social  life, 
these  subscription  dances  were  the  chief  glory; 
Washington  and  Lafayette  were  both  glad  to  be 
the  Assembly's  guests  of  honor  on  the  occasion 
of  their  visits  to  "  the  old  town  by  the  sea." 

These  assemblies  had  two  managers,  we 
learn,  "  who,  with  powdered  hair  and  chapeau 
under  left  arm,  looked  the  impersonation  of 
power  and  dignity.    Each  lady  was  taken  into 


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442 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


the  ball-room  by  a  manager,  and  seated.  The 
ladies  wore  low-necked  dresses  of  silks  and  satins 
and  velvets.  .  .  .  The  gentlemen  appeared  in 
prescribed  costume,  which  was  blue  coat  with 
bright  buttons,  chapeau  under  arm,  knee- 
breeches,  silk  stockings,  pumps  and  white  kid 
gloves. 

"  At  the  appointed  moment  the  numbers  were 
called  for  the  draw  dance,  after  that  the  cotil- 
lions, which  were  voluntary.  A  manager  led 
the  first  dance  with  the  eldest  lady  or  a  bride, 
if  one  were  present;  and  everything  was  con- 
ducted with  great  state.  About  ten  o'clock, 
sandwiches  of  tongue  and  ham,  with  thin  bis- 
cuit, were  handed  round  on  large  waiters,  in 
turn  with  sangaree,  lemonade  and  chocolate." 

Mrs.  Ichabod  Goodwin,  among  whose  papers 
were  found  these  paragraphs  on  dancing  at  the 
old  Assembly  House,1  adds  that  here,  also,  the 
Boston  Stock  Company  gave  summer  enter- 
tainments for  many  years.  On  these  occasions 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Duff,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pelby,  and 
others  "  played  five  nights  in  the  week  to  the 
elite  of  the  town,  at  a  dollar  a  ticket."  The 
town  had  by  this  time,  it  is  thus  made  clear, 
emancipated  itself  from  the  narrowness  which 
on  June  5,  1762,  caused  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives in  the  province  of  New  Hampshire 
to  decree  that  players  be  not  made  welcome  to 

■Quoted  in  "The  Portsmouth  Book." 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  443 

Portsmouth,  "  at  least  at  this  time."  The 
reasons  behind  this  prohibition  were  alleged  to 
be:  "  Because  when  such  entertainments  are 
a  novelty,  they  have  a  more  peculiar  influence 
on  the  minds  of  young  people,  greatly  endanger 
their  morals  by  giving  them  a  turn  for  intriguing, 
amusement  and  pleasure,  even  upon  the  best 
and  most  favorable  supposition,  that  nothing 
contrary  to  decency  and  good  manners  is  exhib- 
ited; yet  the  strong  impressions  made  by  the 
gallantries,  amors  and  other  moving  representa- 
tions, with  which  the  best  players  abound  will 
dissipate  and  indispose  the  minds  of  youth  not 
used  to  them,  to  everything  important  and 
serious;  and  as  there  is  a  general  complaint  of 
a  prevailing  turn  to  pleasure  and  idleness  in 
most  young  people  among  us,  which  is  too  well 
grounded,  the  entertainments  of  the  stage  would 
inflame  that  temper.  All  young  countries  have 
much  more  occasion  to  encourage  a  spirit  of 
industry  and  application  to  business,  than  to 
countenance  schemes  of  amusement  and  pleas- 
ure." Those  who  are  interested  in  the  steps 
leading  to  this  legislation  are  referred  to  my  book 
on  the  theatre.1 

In  Providence,  as  in  New  Hampshire,  the 

theatre  was  suppressed  at  this  same  time  not 

from  religious  or  moral  scruples,  but  because 

plays  and  players  would  have  engendered  habits 

1 "  Romance  of  the  American  Theatre,"  p.  33. 


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444  SOCIAL  LIFE    IN 

of  extravagant  spending.  From  Williamsburg,1 
where  their  efforts  had  given  much  pleasure, 
there  came  to  Rhode  Island  (in  1762)  David 
Douglass  and  his  associates,  armed  with  a  letter 
of  endorsement  from  Governor  Dinwiddie  of 
Virginia.  They  were  so  well  received  at  New- 
port, where  they  gave  "  a  Benefit  Night  for  the 
Support  of  the  Poor,"  that,  having  secured  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  John  and  Nicholas 
Brown  of  Providence,  they  proceeded  to  erect 
a  "  Histrionic  Academy  "  in  the  latter  city; 
and  there  opened,  in  July,  with  a  representation 
entitled  "  Mora  Castle  taken  by  Storm.**  The 
acting  in  this  play  appears  to  have  been  good 
and  the  performance  enjoyed  by  those  who 
attended  it.  But  there  had  been  a  drought, 
and  the  hay-crop  was  light.  The  town  fathers 
were  not  minded  to  entertain  players  just  then. 
Hence  there  was  speedily  put  through  "  A  Act 
made  for  suppressing  all  Kinds  of  Stage  plays 
or  Theatrical  Shows  within  this  Colony,"  — 
and  the  obnoxious  comedians  were  summarily 
warned  out  of  town. 

A  humorous  touch  is  lent  to  the  accounts  of 
this  action  by  the  story  that  the  sheriff,  whose 
duty  it  was  "  to  proclaim  the  Act  by  beat  of 
Drum  through  the  Streets  of  the  Compact  part 
of  the  Town  of  Providence  ",  adroitly  managed 


tizeaDy  Google 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  445 

to  combine  business  with  pleasure  and  refrained 
from  announcing  the  dictum  of  the  Assembly 
until  after  he  had  witnessed  the  evening's 
performance.  He  appears  to  have  sensed  the 
fact  that  another  quarter  of  a  century  must 
elapse  before  he  would  again  have  a  chance  to 
enjoy  the  drama  in  Providence. 

Far  more  profitable  than  "  stage  diversions  ", 
were  held  to  be  such  an  "  Entertainment  for 
the  Curious  "  as  that  described  in  the  Providence 
Gazette  and  Country  for  March,  1764,  in  which 
it  was  shown  how  one  might  guard  against  light- 
ning in  a  manner  not  "  inconsistent  with  any  of 
the  Principles  of  natural  or  reveal'd  Religion  "; 
or  that  "  artful  Piece  of  Statuary  .  .  .  worthy 
to  be  seen  by  the  Curious  "  which,  at  about  this 
same  time,  set  forth  "  the  famous  City  of  Jerusa- 
lem." 

"  Sights  "  rather  than  theatrical  performances 
flourished  in  all  the  big  towns  of  eighteenth- 
century  New  England.  One  of  the  earliest 
advertisements  which  I  have  found  of  such 
"  sights  "  is  in  the  Boston  News-Letter  of  Decem- 
ber 15,  1726,  and  announces  that  "  The  Lyon 
that  was  to  be  seen  at  Mrs.  Adams's  at  the 
South  End,  Boston,  is  now  Ship'd  on  Board 
the  Sloop  Phoenix,  in  order  to  be  sent  off  to  the 
West  Indies  &c.  And  He  is  now  to  be  seen  on 
board  said  Sloop  at  the  North  side  of  the  Long 
Wharf?,  Boston,  ...  at  6d.  each  person." 


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446  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

Another  early  exhibition  is  thus  chronicled  in 
the  Boston  Evening  Post  of  Monday,  February 
29, 1748: 

"  Whereas  the  Curious  Musical  Machine, 
and  the  Posture-Boy,  at  the  house  of  John 
Williams  in  King  street,  are  to  be  shown  by  the 
owner  but  a  very  little  while  longer  in  this 
Town,  those  minded  to  see  the  same  are  desired 
to  give  speedy  attendance:  And  any  Gentleman 
or  others  minded  to  purchase  the  Living  Crea- 
ture called  a  Tyger-Lyon  (which  is  still  to  be 
seen  there)  may  treat  with  the  Owner  at  said 
Place  as  also  for  said  Machine. 

"  N.  B.  Any  Gentlemen  or  Ladies  that  have 
a  Desire  to  see  the  said  Machine  and  Posture- 
Boy  at  their  Houses  may  be  gratified  therein 
(in  the  Day-time)  by  sending  for  the  same, 
provided  there  be  Company  of  12  Persons  at 
least,  or  Pay  equivalent  for  that  Number,  at 
Two  Shillings,  old  Tenor,  each."     • 

On  October  8,  1741,  "  a  Concert  of  Musick  " 
was  announced  to  be  given  "  at  Mr.  Deblois's 
Great  Room  in  Wing's  Lane  "  (now  Elm  Street). 
"  Tickets  to  be  had  at  the  place  of  performance, 
at  Ten  Shillings  each.  To  begin  at  Six,  and  end 
at  Three"  (sic). 

On  October  2,  1762,  the  following  announce- 
ment appeared : 

"  This  evening  at  a  large  Room  in  Brattle 
street,  formerly  Green  and  Walker's  store  will 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  447 

be  read  an  opera  called  Love  in  a  Village,  By 
a  Person  who  has  Read  and  Sung  in  most  of 
the  great  Towns  of  America.  All  the  Songs  will 
be  sung.  He  personates  all  the  Characters,  and 
enters  into  the  different  Humors  or  Passions  as 
they  change  from  one  to  another  throughout 
the  Opera." 

Who  the  individual  was  who  so  deftly  accom- 
modated himself  to  the  Puritanical  prejudices 
of  the  town  as  to  play  all  the  characters  in  an 
opera  himself  is  not  known. 

Only  with  great  difficulty  had  the  daughters 
of  the  Puritans  been  permitted  to  enjoy  or  to 
study  .music.  Doctor  John  Earle  declared  that 
the  true  Puritan  woman  "  suffers  not  her  daugh- 
ters to  learne  on  the  Virginalls,  because  of  their 
affinity  with  the  Organs."  Yet  we  find  Judge 
Sewall,  a  Puritan  of  the  Puritans,  taking  his 
wife's  virginals  to  be  repaired.  And  soon  the 
spinet  and  the  harpsichord  were  frequently 
being  purchased  by  wealthy  citizens  who  were 
also  God-fearing. 

To  the  accompaniment  of  the  "  new  Clementi 
with  glittering  keys  "  maidens  then  sang  the 
sentimental  ballads  of  the  day  with  just  as 
much  enjoyment  and  zest  as  they  now  sing  arias 
from  grand  opera  while  accompanying  them- 
selves on  a  rich-toned  "  baby  grand."  And 
people  generally  suffered  just  as  much  in  con- 
sequence.   John  Qumcy  Adams,  describing  in 


Digitize  Dy  GOOgk 


448 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


his  diary  for  1788  an  evening  party  at  Newbury- 
port,  where  he  was  then  reading  law,  comments 
in  sprightly  fashion  on  the  music  at  such  affairs. 
"  After  we  had  sat  a  little  while  the  infallible 
request  to  sing  made  its  appearance.  One 
could  not  sing,  and  another  could  not  sing,  and 
a  total  incapacity  to  sing  was  declared  all  round 
the  room.  If  upon  such  occasions  everyone 
would  adhere  to  his  first  assertion  it  would  be 
very  agreeable,  at  least  to  me;  for  in  these 
mixt  companies,  when  the  musical  powers  are 
finally  exerted,  the  only  recompense  for  the 
intolerable  tediousness  of  urging  generally  is  a 
few  very  insipid  songs,  sung  in  a  very  insipid 
manner.  But  the  misfortune  is  that  someone 
always  relents.  When  we  had  gone  through 
this  ceremony  and  had  grown  weary  of  it,  an- 
other equally  stupid  succeeded.  It  was  playing 
pawns:  a  number  of  pledges  were  given  all 
'round,  and  kissing  was  the  only  condition  upon 
which  they  were  redeem 'd.  Ah!  what  kissing! 
'tis  a  profanation  of  one  of  the  most  endearing 
demonstrations  of  Love.  .  .  .  Thus  we  pass'd 
the  heavy  hours  till  about  ten  o'clock,  when 
we  all  retired."  ' 

Whether  the  girl  had  any  musical  talent  or  not, 
she  was  taught  to  play  upon  an  "  instrument ", 
because  this  accomplishment  was  supposed  to 
add  to  her  charm  for  men.    Similarly,  dancing 

1  Massac liuset la  Ilisturirnl  Smicty  Proceedings,  1902. 


" 


12.™,  Google 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  449 

was  encouraged,  despite  the  fierce  frowns  of  the 
clergy,  because  it  promoted  grace  and  that  erect 
carriage  held  to  be  an  indispensable  attribute 
of  the  elegant  young  woman.  It  was  no  less 
in  truth  than  in  jest  that  Doctor  Holmes  wrote: 

"  They  braced  my  aunt  against  a  board 

To  make  her  straight  and  tall, 
They  laced  her  up,  they  starved  her  down, 

To  make  her  light  and  small. 
They  pinched  her  feet,  they  singed  her  hair, 

They  screwed  it  up  with  pins  — 
Oh,  never  mortal  suffered  more 

In  penance  for  her  sins." 

Yet  this  aunt  and  the  other  girls  of  her  set 
had  plenty  of  good  times  withal.  Gaiety  and 
feasting  abounded  in  all  the  big  towns  of  New 
England,  especially  during  the  period  just  pre- 
ceding the  Revolution.  Rowe's  diary  pictures 
for  us  a  sumptuousness  of  social  life  unlike  any- 
thing to  be  found  to-day  in  American  towns  of 
■  less  than  twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  —  Bos- 
ton's size  at  that  period.  And  slender  as  the 
girls  were,  they  must  now  and  then,  at  any  rate, 
have  eaten  as  no  girl  of  to-day  ever  eats.  Din- 
ner was  served  in  the  early  afternoon  and  supper 
in  the  evening.  The  quantity  of  heavy  food 
consumed  was  astounding.  Venison  and  salmon 
appear  to  have  been  favorite  dishes,  though  we 
find  Rowe  recording,  on  March  20,  1765 :  "  had 


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450  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

a  fine  lamb  for  dinner;  the  whole  weighed  28 
lbs.;  this  is  the  first  lamb  I  have  tasted  this 
season."  Other  dishes  chronicled  with  equal  ap- 
preciation are  "a  fine  hind  quarter  of  veal" 
(February  8, 1776) ; "  buffalow  stakes  which  were 
very  tender"  (April  9,  1770);  partridges,  the 
first  of  the  season  (August  SO,  1766);  and  a 
"  pigg  which  proved  tuff  "  (September  18, 1764). 
Cherries  and  strawberries  are  the  only  fruits 
named  in  the  diary  and  green  peas  the  only 
vegetables.  So,  for  lack  of  salads  and  entrees, 
Mrs.  Rowe  and  her  fair  friends  must  needs 
have  partaken  often  of  partridges,  "  pigg,"  and 
"  buffalow  stakes." 

Also,  at  times,  of  turtle.  Captain  Francis 
Goelet,  a  New  York  merchant-mariner,  has  left 
us  several  piquant  pictures  of  good  times  in 
which  turtle  figured.  Under  date  of  October 
2,  1750,  we  find  in  his  journal: '  "  Had  an  invi- 
tation to  day  to  Go  to  a  Turtle  Frolick  with  a 
Compy  of  Gentn  and  Ladies  at  Mr.  Richard- 
son's in  Cambridge  abt  6  Miles  from  Towne.  I 
accordingly  waited  on  Miss  Betty  Wendell  with 
a  Chaise,  who  was  my  Partner,  the  Companie 
Consisted  of  about  20  Couple  Gentn  and  Ladies 
of  the  Best  Fashion  in  Boston,  viz.  the  two 
Miss  Phips,  Lut  Gouoenr  Daughters,  the  Miss 
Childs,    Miss    Quiuceys,    Miss    Wendells    &c. 


.^Google 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  451 

Dances  Several  Minuits  and  Country  Dances, 
and  where  very  Merry  about  Dusk  we  all  rode 
Home,  and  See  our  Partners  safe,  and  Spent  the 
Evening  at  Capt.  Maglachlins  &c." 

One  of  the  pleasant  little  jaunts  in  which 
Captain  Goelet  participated  at  this  time  was 
out  to  the  gracious  country  home  of  Mr.  Ed- 
mund Quincey,  near  which  was  "  a  BeautifuII 
Cannal  which  is  Supply'd  by  a  Brook,  which  is 
well  Stock  with  Fine  Silver  Eels,  we  Caught  a 
fine  Parcell  and  Carried  them  Home  and  had 
them  drest  for  Supper."  Fish  loom  large  the 
next  day,  too,  when  a  trip  to  Marblehead  is 
being  described.  "  This  Place  is  Noted  for 
Children  and  Noureches  the  most  of  any  Place 
for  its  Bigness  in  North  America,  it's  Said  the 
Chief  Cause  is  attributed  to  their  feeding  on 
Cods  Heads,  &c.  which  is  their  principall  Diett." 

Even  the  Puritan's  Thanksgiving  was  made  to 
yield  up  joy  to  this  buoyant  soul.  The  entry 
in  the  journal  for  November  1  is:  "  This  Being 
a  General  Thanksgiveing  day,  was  Strictly 
Observed  heere  and  more  so  by  the  Presbyte- 
rians, its  Calld  their  Christmas,  and  is  the  Great- 
est Holyday  they  have  in  the  Year  it  is  Observed 
more  Strict  then  Sunday.  Went  to  Meeting 
with  Capt.  Wendell  and  Family  where  Dyned 
with  a  Large  Compy  Gentn  and  Ladies  and 
where  very  Merry  had  a  Good  deal  Chat  and 
Spent  the  Evening  at  Mr.  Jacob  Wendells  with 


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452  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

a  Large  Company  Sup'd  Drank  A  Number 
Bumpers  and  Sung  Our  Songs  &c.  till  morng." 
So,  even  without  the  theatre,  there  seems  to 
have  been  a  good  deal  "  doing  "  in  the  big  town 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  And  by  the  time 
the  nineteenth  century  had  fairly  taken  pos- 
session of  the  stage,  play-acting,  too,  came  into 
its  own,  as  I  have  elsewhere  shown. 


zeacy  Google 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  XIII 

FUNERALS  AS  FESTIVALS 

JUST  as  the  Puritans  gave  parties  when  their 
children  were  born,  —  brewing  "  groaning 
beare  "  and  baking  "  groaning  cakes  "  in 
preparation  for  this  great  event,  —  so  they , 
made  festivals  of  their  funerals.  A  funeral  was 
counted  a  much  more  important  function  than 
a  wedding,  and  attendance  at  funerals  began  at 
a  very  early  age.  Judge  Sewall  tells  of  the  at- 
tendance of  his  little  children  at  funerals  when 
only  five  and  six  years  old;  little  girls  were 
often  pall-bearers  at  the  funerals  of  their  child- 
ish mates. 

On  these  occasions,  at  least,  it  would  seem  as  if 
the  customary  indulgence  in  liquor  as  a  solace 
for  grief  would  have  been  omitted.  But  such 
was  not  the  case.  Even  as  late  as  the  early 
nineteenth  century,  according  to  Lucius  Man- 
lius  Sargent,  children  were  not  only  employed 
as  pall-bearers  but  conducted  themselves  just 
as  adults  did  after  the  performance  of  this  office. 

"  Twelve  years  ago,  a  clergyman  of  Newbury- 
port  told  me  that,  when  settled  in  Concord, 


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454  SOCIAL   LIFE   IN 

New  Hampshire,  some  years  before,  he  officiated 
at  the  funeral  of  a  little  boy.  The  body  was 
borne,  as  is  quite  common,  in  a  chaise,  and  six 
little  nominal  pall-bearers,  the  oldest  not  thir- 
teen, walked  by  the  side  of  the  vehicle.  Before 
they  left  the  house,  a  sort  of  master  of  cere- 
monies took  them  to  the  table  and  mixed  a 
tumbler  of  gin,  water,  and  sugar  for  each."  * 

The  Puritans  seem  to  have  taken  quite  literally 
the  exhortation :  "  Give  strong  drink  unto  him 
that  is  ready  to  perish  and  wine  unto  those  that 
be  of  heavy  hearts."  When  David  Porter,  of 
Hartford,  was  drowned,  in  the  year  1678,  the 
bill  for  the  expenses  of  the  recovery  and  burial 
of  his  body  included  liquor  for  those  who  dived 
for  him,  for  those  who  brought  him  home,  and 
for  the  jury  of  inquest.  Eight  gallons  and  three 
quarts  of  wine  and  a  barrel  of  cider  were  thus 
consumed.  The  winding-sheet  and  coffin  used 
at  this  funeral  cost  thirty  shillings,  but  the  liquor 
consumed  came  to  more  than  twice  that  sum. 

There  is  no  question  whatever  that  the  ad- 
vance of  the  temperance  idea  has  "  done  for 
funerals  ";  has  "  done  ",  at  any  rate,  for  funerals 
as  festivals.  In  the  old  days  invitations  to 
funerals  were  wont  to  be  sent  around  as  they 
are  at  present  to  balls  and  parties.  Conse- 
quently funeral  processions  were  often  of  most 
imposing    length.     Sargent    recalls    one    very 

>  "  Dealings  with  the  Dead,"  p.  13. 


zeacy  Google 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  455 

long  one  which,  while  going  south  by  the  Old 
South  Church  in  Boston,  met  another  of  equal 
length,  going  north,  and  delayed  the  progress 
of  a  third  coming  down  School  Street. 

Cotton  Mather's  funeral  is  thus  described  in 
the  New  England  Weekly  Journal  of  February 
16,  1728: 

"  On  Monday  last,  the  remains  of  the  late  very 
Reverend  and  Learned  Dr.  Cotton  Mather,  who 
deceas'd  on  Tuesday  the  18th.  Instant  to  the 
great  loss  and  sorrow  of  this  Town  and  Country 
were  very  honourably  interred.  His  Reverend 
Colleague  in  deep  Mourning,  with  the  Brethren 
of  the  Church  walking  in  a  Body  before  the 
Corpse.  The  Six  first  Ministers  of  the  Boston 
lecture  supported  the  Pall.  Several  Gentle- 
men of  the  bereaved  Flock  took  their  turns  to 
bare  the  Coffin.  After  which  followed  first  the 
bereaved  Relatives  in  Mourning;  then  His 
Honour  the  Lieut  Governour,  the  Honourable 
His  Majesty's  Council,  and  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives; and  then  a  large  Train  of  Ministers, 
Justices,  Merchants,  Scholars  and  other  Princi- 
pal Inhabitants  both  of  Men  and  Women. 
The  Streets  were  crowded  with  People  and  the 
Windows  fill'd  with  Sorrowful  Spectators  all 
the  way  to  the  Burying  Place:  Where  the 
Corpse  was  deposited  in  a  Tomb  belonging  to 
the  worthy  Family." 

One  great  expense  of  every  funeral  was  gloves. 


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456  SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 

In  some  places  a  pair  of  gloves  was  sent  as  an 
invitation  to  relatives  and  friends  and  digni- 
taries, whose  presence  was  desired  at  the  cere- 
mony; over  one  thousand  pairs  of  gloves  were 
given  away  at  the  funeral  of  Governor  Belcher's 
wife.  Social  distinctions  were  carefully  ob- 
served in  the  quality  of  gloves  thus  employed, 
and  frequently  provision  concerning  this  detail 
was  made  in  a  man's  will.  Thus  Samuel  Fuller 
of  Plymouth  directed,  in  1633,  that  his  sister 
was  to  mourn  his  departure  in  gloves  worth 
twelve  shillings,  though  gloves  worth  only  two 
shillings  sixpence  were  held  to  be  quite  ade- 
quate for  the  grief  of  a  certain  Rebecca  Prime, 
whom  he  also  named  in  his  will.  To  the  under- 
bearers  who  carried  the  coffin  were  usually  given 
different  and  cheaper  gloves  than  those  pur- 
chased for  the  pall-bearers. 

At  the  funerals  of  the  wealthy,  rings  also 
played  an  important  part.  These  were  given  to 
relatives  and  to  persons  of  prominence  in  the 
community  with  such  a  degree  of  lavishness 
that  Sewall,  between  1687  and  1725,  received 
no  less  than  fifty-seven  mourning  rings.  When 
Doctor  Samuel  Buxton  of  Salem  died,  in  1758, 
at  the  advanced  age  of  eighty-one,  he  left  to 
his  heirs  a  quart  tankard  full  of  mourning  rings 
which  he  had  received  at  funerals.  Sometimes 
these  rings  were  quite  expensive;  those  dis- 
tributed upon  the  death  of  Waitstill  Winthrop 


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OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  457 

were  worth  over  a  pound  apiece,  —  and  they 
numbered  sixty  in  all. 

In  design,  mourning  rings  were  usually  of  gold 
enamelled  in  black  and  bore  a  death's  head,  a 
coffin  containing  a  skeleton,  a  winged  skull,  an 
urn  or  some  other  similarly  cheering  emblem. 
Trite  little  mottoes  such  as  "  Death  parts  United 
Hearts,"  or  "  Prepared  be  to  follow  me " 
adorned  some  of  the  rings;  and  in  other  cases 
a  framed  lock  of  the  deceased  friend's  hair 
constituted  the  chief  distinction.  At  the  rooms 
of  the  Essex  Institute  in  Salem  may  be  seen  a 
collection  of  mourning  rings;  this  organization 
has  also  published  a  list  of  all  the  mourning 
rings  known  to  be  in  existence  in  that  old  town. 
For  these  relics  were  so  greatly  prized  by  the 
colonists  and  their  immediate  descendants  as 
to  be  carefully  bequeathed  from  one  generation 
to  another. 

Besides  being  given  gloves  and  a  ring,  the 
parson  at  these  early  funerals  was  usually  pre- 
sented with  a  scarf  of  white  linen  as  fine  as  the 
family  could  afford.  This  scarf  was  about 
three  yards  long  and  was  worn  folded  over  the 
right  shoulder;  rosettes  of  black  crape  fastened 
it  at  this  point  as  well  as  where  the  ends  crossed 
under  the  left  arm.  After  the  funeral,  the  scarf 
was  made  into  a  shirt,  which  the  officiating 
minister  was  supposed  to  wear  as  a  memorial 
of  the  deceased. 


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468  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Also  of  fine  white  linen,  though  perfectly 
plain,  was  the  shroud,  a  garment  exactly  the 
same  for  men  and  women,  and  cut  long  enough 
to  he  tied  together  with  a  cord  below  the  feet. 
The  coffin  itself  was  lined  with  white  linen,  and 
a  curtain  of  linen,  pinked  on  its  lower  edge 
and  just  long  enough  to  cover  the  face  of  the 
dead,  was  nailed  to  its  head;  this  was  thrown 
back  when  those  present  at  the  funeral  were 
"  viewing  the  remains."  Everything  possible 
about  the  house  was  covered  with  white  linen 
to  heighten  the  ghostly  effect,  special  attention 
in  this  way  being  given  to  mirrors  and  pictures. 
No  outside  box  was  used  in  the  early  days,  and 
the  handles  of  the  coffin  were  of  rope  and 
"  practicable."  For  some  time  there  were  no 
hearses;  in  the  country  districts,  where  the 
distance  was  very  long,  a  farm-wagon  was  used 
to  transport  the  coffin.  But  for  as  far  as  a 
couple  of  miles  it  was  frequently  carried  on  a 
bier  covered  with  a  black  pall.  The  bearers 
would  then  be  organized  into  groups  of  four 
and  would  relieve  each  other  from  time  to  time 
without  breaking  step,  —  having  been  strength- 
ened and  refreshed  for  their  task  by  drinking  from 
the  bottle  which  was  kept  in  free  circulation. 

When  people  of  quality  or  of  high  public 
office  died,  the  funeral  was  a  very  impressive 
function.  And,  of  course,  it  was  then  an  honor 
to  be   invited.     Sewall,   who  hated   Governor 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  458 

Andros,  was  yet  proud  to  attend  the  funeral 
of  the  governor's  lady,  a  festival  which  he  de- 
scribes as  follows: 

"  Friday,  Feb.  10,  1687  —  Between  4.  and  5. 
I  went  to  the  Funeral  of  Lady  Andros,  having 
been  invited  by  the  Clark  of  the  South  Company. 
Between  7.  and  8  links  illuminating  the  cloudy 
air.  The  Corps  was  carried  into  the  Herse 
drawn  by  Six  Horses.  The  Souldiers  making 
a  Guard  from  the  Governor's  House  down  the 
Prison  Lane  to  the  South-Meetinghouse,  there 
taken  out  and  carried  in  at  the  western  dore, 
and  set  in  the  Alley  before  the  pulpit,  with  Six 
Mourning  Women  by  it.  House  made  light 
with  Candles  and  Torches.  Was  a  great  noise 
and  clamor  to  keep  people  out  of  the  House, 
that  might  not  rush  in  too  soon.  I  went  home, 
where  about  nine  aclock  I  heard  the  Bells  toll 
again  for  the  Funeral.  It  seems  Mr.  Ratcliffs 
Text  was,  Cry,  all  flesh  is  Grass." 

This  being  a  Church  of  England  service, 
Sewall  would  not  stay  for  the  sermon.  But 
when  Governor  Bradstreet  died  and  was  buried 
in  Salem,  the  judge  journeyed  thither  with 
alacrity,  staying  to  the  very  end  of  the  ceremony 
and  recording  that  he  "  bore  the  Feet  of  the 
Corps  into  the  Tomb." 

Even  on  those  occasions  when  there  was  real 
grief  over  the  loss  of  the  departed,  the  attendant 
ceremonies  appear  to  have  gone  far  towards 


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460 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


comforting  the  bereaved.  Sewall  writes  with 
scarcely  concealed  unction  of  the  eloquent  ad- 
dress he  made  at  the  funeral  of  his  mother,  and 
notes  that  he  "  could  hardly  speak  for  passion 
and  tears."  Yet  he  records  also  that  he  "  eat 
Roost  Fowl  "  at  the  inn  where  he  put  up  on  his 
way  back  to  Boston  from  Newbury.  When 
his  second  wife  died,  he  tells  us  that  "  Govr 
and  Lt  Govr  had  Scarvs  and  Rings,"  and  then 
adds  that  he  afterwards  "  eat  a  good  Dish  of 
Strawberries,  part  of  Sister  Stoddard's  present." 
Fifty  years  later,  at  the  period  when  John 
Rowe  was  Boston's  chief  diarist,  funeral  cere- 
monies were  still  among  the  foremost  pageants 
of  the  town.  Those  of  distinguished  public 
men  drew  a  multitude  of  spectators.  Reverend 
Doctor  Mayhew  was  buried  July  11,  1766,  —  a 
day  when  the  thermometer  stood  at  90  degrees; 
yet  besides  a  long  procession  of  men  and  women 
on  foot,  there  were  fifty-seven  carriages,  of  which 
sixteen  were  coaches  and  chariots,  following 
the  remains.  A  number  of  similarly  elaborate 
funerals  are  described  by  Rowe,  but  the  most 
elaborate  of  all,  and  the  one  with  which  we  may 
as  well  conclude  these  citations,  was  that  ac- 
companying the  burial,  September  12,  1767, 
of  Jeremiah  Gridley,  father  of  the  bar  in  Boston 
and  master  and  guide  in  legal  studies  of  the 
great  John  Adams.  Gridley  had  been  high  in 
the  Councils  of  the  Masons  and  so  was  attended 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  461 

by  one  hundred  and  sixty -one  men  in  full  regalia. 
Besides  which  there  were  lawyers  in  their  robes, 
gentlemen  of  the  town,  and  a  great  many  coaches, 
chariots,  and  chaises,  with  such  a  multitude  of 
spectators  as  Rowe  had  "  never  before  seen 
since  he  had  been  in  New  England." 

Funerals  were  recognized,  too,  in  the  inevita- 
ble needlework.  Embroideries  bearing  funeral 
urns,  drooping  willows,  and  the  like  attained 
a  great  vogue  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  soon  no  properly  ambitious  house- 
hold was  without  one.  Just  as  gravestones 
now  are  designed  with  a  view  to  accommodating 
the  entire  family  roster,  so  these  mourning 
pieces  were  prepared  in  advance,  and  an  empty 
space  left  waiting  for  some  one  to  die.  The 
Tree  of  Life  was  a  favorite  design  in  these  lugu- 
brious perpetrations. 

After  the  death  of  Washington,  in  1799,  each 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  by  the  desire  of 
Congress,  wore  upon  his  left  arm  for  thirty  days 
a  simple  band  of  crape.  Loyal  matrons,  not 
to  be  outdone,  provided  themselves  with  mourn- 
ing cap-ribbons,  —  black  bands  on  which  were 
stamped  in  white  letters  the  inscription  that 
had  been  on  Washington's  coffin-plate: 

"GENERAL  GEORGE  WASHINGTON 

Departed  this  life  on  the  14th  of  December. 

1799,  JR.  68." 


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462  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Washington  was  also  mourned  in  wall-paper! 
Soon  after  the  death  of  the  Father  of  His  Country, 
memorial  paper  in  black  and  gray  was  placed 
on  many  walls  throughout  the  country,  and 
Miss  Kate  Sanborn,  in  her  charming  book  on 
wall-papers,  has  given  us  a  reproduction  of  a 
New  England  room  thus  decorated;  the  design 
used  consisted  chiefly  of  a  big  bare  tomb  marked 
"  Sacred  to  Washington." 

In  this  same  book1 1  find  the  only  reference  that 
I  have  anywhere  met  to  the  lugubrious  custom 
of  setting  aside  one  room  in  large  houses  for  a 
"  death  room."  The  Knox  house  in  Thomas- 
ton,  Maine,  had  such  a  room  over  the  eastern 
dining-room.  The  paper  here  was  dark  and 
gloomy,  —  white  with  black  figures  and  a  deep 
mourning  frieze;  and  there  was  but  one  window. 
Benches  were  ranged  stiffly  around  the  sides  of 
the  room,  and  there  were  drawers  filled  with  the 
necessities  for  preparing  a  body  for  burial. 
Here  the  dead  lay  until  the  funeral.  And 
between  obsequies  the  room  was  always  closed 
up,  empty,  gruesome  —  waiting. 

When  the  Reverend  Samuel  Phillips  of  An- 
dover  died,  in  1771,  the  parish  voted:  "that 
at  his  funeral  the  bearers  should  have  rings; 
that  the  ordained  ministers  who  attend  the 
funeral  shall  have  gloves;  that  the  ministers 
who  preached  gratis   in   Mr.   Phillips'    illness, 

i "  Old-Time  Wall-Papers." 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  463 

shall  have  gloves;  that  the  parish  will  be  at 
the  charge  of  the  funeral  of  the  Rev.  S.  Phillips; 
and  voted  —  to  hear  the  bearers  in  their  turn." 

Popular  ministers  naturally  collected  an  ap- 
palling quantity  of  gloves  as  the  years  rolled 
by.  Reverend  Andrew  Eliot,  who  in  1742  was 
ordained  pastor  of  the  new  North  Church  in 
Boston,  took  it  into  his  head  to  keep  a  careful 
account,  in  a  Nathaniel  Ames  Almanac,  of  the 
various  tributes  which  came  to  him  from  funerals, 
weddings,  and  christenings,  and  recorded,  also, 
how  many  pairs  of  the  gloves  were  kid,  how  many 
lamb's-wool  and  how  many  were  long  or  women's 
gloves,  intended  for  the  parson's  lady.  Being 
of  a  thrifty  disposition  —  or  perhaps  it  was 
because  he  had  eleven  children  to  support  — 
Doctor  Eliot  eventually  tried  to  turn  his  trophies 
into  money  and,  by  careful  bartering,  realized 
what  would  amount  to  about  six  hundred  and 
forty  dollars  from  the  sale  of  three  thousand 
pairs  of  gloves  accumulated  during  his  long 
lifetime!  His  own  funeral  must  have  put  a 
great  many  more  pairs  into  circulation.  It 
occurred  "  September  15,  1778,  when  near  four 
hundred  couples  and  thirty-two  carriages," 
Father  Gannett  writes  on  the  fly-leaf  of  his 
almanac,  "  followed  his  remains,  up  Cross  Street, 
through  Black  Horse  Lane,  to  Corpse  Hill." 

Since  every  human  experience  was  "  im- 
proved "  by  the  thrifty  moralists  of  these  old 


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464 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


days,  death,  of  course,  had  its  place  with  the 
others.  When  an  aged  man,  renowned  for  his 
many  virtues,  neared  his  end,  the  neighbors, 
young  and  old,  would  come  in  to  see  how  a 
Christian  could  die.  With  awe  they  would 
observe  the  slow  and  laborious  heaving  of  the 
departing  one's  chest,  the  vacancy  of  his  fast- 
dimming  eyes,  and  the  spasmodic  trembling 
of  his  time-worn  hands.  To  us  the  idea  of 
watching  such  a  spectacle  for  perhaps  hours  at 
a  time  is'very  repugnant;  but  our  pious  fore- 
fathers did  not  so  esteem  it.  Elaborate  de- 
scriptions of  impressive  death-bed  scenes  were 
printed  in  many  of  the  old  almanacs  and  Sewall's 
diary  abounded  in  such.  Early  advertisements 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet  make  much  of  the  fact 
that  the  funeral  in  the  play  will  be  given  in 
painstaking  and  truthful  detail! 

Yet  there  was  a  strong  feeling  that  too  great 
advantage  was  frequently  taken  of  funerals 
as  an  excuse  for  extravagance.  This  may  be 
seen  from  the  fact  that,  at  a  meeting  held  in 
Faneuil  Hall,  October  28,  1767,  with  Honorable 
James  Otis  as  moderator,  the  following  resolu- 
tion was  passed: 

"  And  we  further  agree  strictly  to  adhere  to  the 
late  regulations  respecting  funerals,  and  will  not 
use  any  gloves  but  what  are  manufactured  here, 
nor  procure  any  new  garments,  upon  such  occa- 
sions, but  what  shall  be  absolutely  necessary.' 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND 


465 


The  reference  here  is  doubtless  to  recent 
Massachusetts  legislation  forbidding  the  use 
of  wine  and  rum  at  funerals.  Some  curb  had 
obviously  become  advisable  when  an  ordinary 
funeral,  such  as  that  of  Thomas  Salter,  who 
died  in  1714,  occasioned  such  a  bill  as  the  fol- 
lowing: 

£      s      d 

50  yds  of  Plush 10 

24  yds  silk  crepe 2 

9  S-8  black  cloth 11 

10  yards  fustian 1 

Wadding 0 

Stay  tape  and  buckram 7 

18  yds.  shalloon 2 

To  making  ye  cloths 4 

Fans  and  girdles 0 

Gloves 10 

Hatte,  shoes,  and  stockings S 

50}^  yds.  lutestring 25 

Several  rings 3 

Also  buttons,  silk  cloggs 

2  yards  of  cypress 8     10      0 

To  83  gallons  of  wine  @4s.  6d 7      8      6 

To  12  ozs.  spice  @  18d 0     18      0 

To  %  cwt.  sugar  @  7s 0     18      0 

To  opening  ye  Tomb 

■  To  ringing  ye  Bells 

To  ye  Pauls 

Doctor's  and  nurse's  bills 10 

—  the  whole  amounting  to  over  £100 


16 

0 

5 

0 

6 

8 

6 

9 

7 

6 

12 

0 

17 

0 

10 

0 

9 

6 

15 

0 

5 

0 

10 

0 

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466 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


However  much  people  of  different  wealth  and 
station  might  vary  in  the  extravagance  of  their 
funerals,  all,  for  a  long  time,  received  pretty 
nearly  the  same  kind  of  recognition  on  their 
gravestones.  Every  third  or  fourth  tablet  was 
inscribed : 

"  Thou  traveller  that  passest  by, 
As  thou  art  now,  so  once  was  I; 
As  I  am  now,  thou  soon  shall  be, 
Prepare  for  death  and  follow  me." 

Diverting  and  ingenious  epitaphs  existed  here 
and  there,  to  be  sure,  as  all  of  us  who  frequent 
old  graveyards  in  New  England  very  well  know. 
Sometimes  they  were  of  domestic  manufacture, 
—  and  sometimes  they  were  not.  On  the  Ben- 
nington tombstone  of  the  Reverend  Jedidiah 
Dewey,  the  first  pastor  in  Vermont,  may  be 
found  the  following: 

"  Let's  talk  of  graves  and  worms  and  epitaphs; 
Make  dust  our  paper,  &  with  rainy  eyes, 
Write  sorrow  on  the  bosom  of  the  earth." 

Some  of  my  readers  will  recognize  this  as  an  ex- 
tract from  Shakespeare's  Richard  the  Second, 
and  will  be  the  more  interested  on  that  account 
in  the  Reverend  Jedidiah,  who  differed  from 
most  parsons  of  his  time  in  being  an  ardent 
admirer  of  the  Bard  of  Avon,  and  who  himself 
ordained  that  this  should  be  his  epitaph. 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  467 

In  an  ancient  graveyard  in  Vernon,  Vermont, 
may  be  seen  one  of  the  many  epitaphs  written 
by  Reverend  Bunker  Gay,  a  famous  minister 
in  Hinsdale,  New  Hampshire,  across  the  river, 
and  a  person  of  quite  remarkable  talent  and  wit: 

MEMENTO  MORI 

"  Here  lies  cut  down  like  unripe  fruit 
A  son  of  Mr.  Amos  Tute, 
And  Mrs.  Jemima  Tute  his  Wife 
CalPd  Jonathan  of  Whose  frail  Life 
The  days  all  summ'd  (how  short  the  account) 
Scarcely  to  fourteen  years  Amount 
Born  on  the  Twelfth  of  May  Was  He 
In  Seventeen  Hundred  Sixty  Three. 
To  Death  he  fell  a  helpless  Prey 
April  the  Five  &  Twentieth  Day 
In  Seventeen  Hundred  Seventy  Seven 
Quitting  this  World  we  hope  for  Heaven 
But  tho  his  Spirit's  fled  on  high 
His  body  mould'ring  here  must  lie 
Behold  th'  amazing  alteration 
Effected  by  Inoculation 
The  means  improv'd  his  Life  to  Save 
Hurred  him  headlong  to  the  Grave 
Full  in  the  Bloom  of  Youth  he  fell 
Alass  What  human  Tongue  can  tell 
The  Mothers  Grief  her  Anguish  Show 
Or  paint  the  Fathers  heavier  Woe 
Who  now  no  nat'ral  Offspring  has 
His  ample  Fortune  to  possess. 
To  fill  his  place  Stand  in  his  Stead 
Or  bear  his  Name  When  he  is  dead 


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468 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


So  God  ordain'd  His  Ways  are  Just 
The  Empires  crumble  into  Dust 
Life  and  the  World  Mere  Bubbles  are 
Set  loose  to  these  for  Heaven  prepare." 

On  the  Duxbury,  Massachusetts,  tombstone 
of  Doctor  Rufus  Hathaway,  who  died  in  1817,  is 
the  following,  which  is  really  interesting  because 
it  fits  the  busy  physician  for  whom  it  was  written : 

"  Full  many  a  journey,  night  and  day, 
I've  travelled  weary  on  the  way 
To  heal  the  sick,  but  now  I'm  gone 
A  journey  never  to  return." 

In  a  graveyard  of  Randolph.  Massachusetts, 
is  another  epitaph  worthy  of  note: 

JONA.  MANN 

Born  Dec.  7,  1786,  died  April  23,  1873. 

His  truthfulness  no  one  doubted.     He  was 

very  poor,  consequently 

not  respected. 

Again  of  autobiographic  interest  is  the  fol- 
lowing over  a  grave  in  a  cemetery  near  Boston : 

JOSEPH  SHELDON 

"  I  was  a  stout  young  man 
As  you  might  see  in  ten 
And  when  I  thought  of  this 
I  took  in  hand  my  pen 


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OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  469 

And  wrote  it  down  so  plain 
That  every  one  might  see 
That  I  was  cut  down  like 
A  blossom  from  a  tree. 
The  Lord  rest  my  soul." 

One  of  the  most  touching  epitaphs  I  have  ever 
read  is  this  of  a  slave: 

"  God  wills  us  free;   man  wills  us  slaves 

I  will  as  God  wills,  Gods  will  be  done 

Here  lies  the  body  of 

JOHN  JACK 

A  native  of  Africa,  who  died 

March  1773  aged  about  sixty  years. 

Though  born  in  a  land  of  slavery  he 

He  was  born  free 

Though  he  lived  in  a  land  of  liberty 

He  lived  a  slave. 

Till  by  his  honest  (though  stolen)  labors 

He  acquired  the  cause  of  slavery 

Which  gave  him  freedom 

Though  not  long  before 

Death,  the  grand  tyrant 

'  Gave  him  his  final  emancipation 

And  put  him  on  a  footing  with  kings. 

Though  a  slave  to  vice 

He  practised  those  virtues 

Without  which  kings  are  but  slaves." 

The  excellent  qualities  of  another  good  slave, 
who  lived  and  died  in  Attleboro,  Massachusetts, 
are  celebrated  thus: 


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? 


470  SOCIAL  LIFE  IX 

"  Here  lies  the  best  of  slaves 
Now  turning  into  dust, 
Caesar,  the  Ethiopian  claims 
A  place  among  the  just. 

"  His  faithful  soul  has  fled 

To  realms  of  heavenly  light 
And  by  the  blood  that  Jesus  shed 
Is  changed  from  black  to  white. 

Jan.  15  he  quitted  the  stage 
In  the  77th  year  of  his  age. 

1781." 

The  last  two  lines  seem  by  another  hand  t 
remind  one  that  even  epitaphs  are  sometu 
edited  —  and  proofread.  Witness  the  stx 
which,  after  setting  forth  the  virtues  of  M 
Margaret,  etc.,  wife  of,  etc.,  who  died,  etc.,  ad 
"  Erratum,  for  Margaret  read  Martha." 

It  was  common  for  many  families  in  old  N 
England  to  have  private  burial-places  near  1 
house;  in  almost  any  long  ride  through  t 
sparsely  settled  parts  of  Maine,  New  Hampshi 
and  Vermont,  one  may  still  pass  little  hoi 
cemeteries  where  two  or  three  white  stoi 
shine  out  among  the  trees.  Funeral  processic 
which  ended  at  these  little  graveyards  woi 
very  likely  have  been  a  family  party.  0 
scarcely  wonders  that  a  funeral  came  to  be 
festival  on  such  occasions.  For  the  mourne 
as  well  as  the  bearers,  must  then  have  be 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  471 

men  and  women  whose  opportunities  for  social 
intercourse  were  exceedingly  limited,  whose 
lives  were  barren  of  incident,  to  whom  came  no 
daily  news,  and  whose  journeys  were  few  and  far 
between.  No  wonder  that  they  "  enjoyed  a 
funeral  " —  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  says  his  father 
always  did. 


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SOCIAL  LIFE 


NEVER  is  the  New  England  country  more 
beautiful  than  in  the  golden  days  of  late 
October,  when  the  ripe  corn  is  stacked 
high  in  the  meadows,  and  piles  of  gleaming 
yellow  pumpkins  greet  the  eye  at  every  turn. 
Small  wonder  our  forefathers  made  almost  a 
saint  of  old  Pompion,  and  chanted  joyfully: 

"  For  pottage  and  puddings  and  custards  and 
pies 

Our  pumpkins  and  parsnips  are  common  sup- 
plies; 

We  have  pumpkin  at  morning  and  pumpkin  at 
noon 

If  it  was  not  for  pumpkin  we  should  be  undone." 

St.  Pompion's  Day,  as  Churchmen,  in  de- 
rision, called  Thanksgiving  Day,  was  logically 
the  greatest  day  in  the  Puritan  calendar. 

There  are  those  who  claim  that  Thanksgiving 
Day  was  the  first  holiday,  chronologically,  in 
the  history  of  New  England,  even  as  it  remains, 


;e;)yGoogle 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  473 

after  a  passage  of  nearly  three  hundred  years, 
our  first  holiday  aflectionally.  If  we  may 
believe  the  record  contained  in  the  family  Bible 
of  William  White,  the  Pilgrim,  —  a  "  Breeches 
Bible  "  of  1588,  —  the  first  Thanksgiving  Day 
ever  observed  on  this  continent  was  December 
20, 1620.  In  this  venerable  old  volume  may  be 
found  the  following  entry:  "William  White 
Maried.  on  ye  3d  day  of  March  1620  to  Susannah 
Tilly.  Peregrine  Whitee  Born  on  Boared  Ye 
Mayflower.  .  .  .  Sonne  born  to  Susanna  Whtee 
December  19th  1620  yt  Six  oclock  morning. 
Next  day  we  meet  for  prayer  and  thanksgiving." 
Thus  New  England's  most  honored  of  all  home 
festivals  is  tied  up,  in  narrative  history,  with  a 
wedding-day  and  the  birth  of  a  first  baby. 
It  seems  a  great  pity  if  we  must  sacrifice  *  so 
poetic  and  picturesque  an  origin  for  the  most 
satisfying  of  New  England  festivals! 

To  be  sure,  there  is  no  mention  here  of  roast 
turkey  and  cranberry  sauce,  apple,  mince,  or 
pumpkin  pies.  Feasting  as  a  feature  of  Thanks- 
giving came  in  a  year  later  —  when  the  return 
of  seed-time  and  harvest  had  made  this  pleasant 
indulgence  possible.  As  chronicled  in  "  Mourt's 
Relation",  this  celebration  was  as  follows: 
"  Our  harvest  being  gotten  in,  our  Governour 
sent  foure  men  on  fowling,  that  so  we  might 


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474  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

after  a  more  speciall  manner  rioyce  together, 
after  we  bad  gathered  the  fruit  of  our  labours; 
they  foure  in  one  day  killed  as  much  fowle,  as 
with  a  little  helpe  beside,  served  the  Company 
almost  a  weeke,  at  which  time  amongst  other 
Recreations,  we  exercised  our  Armes,  many  of 
the  Indians  coming  amongst  us,  and  amongst 
the  rest  their  greatest  King  Massasoyt,  with 
some  ninetie  men,  whom  for  three  dayes  we 
entertained  and  feasted,  and  they  went  out  and 
killed  five  Deere,  which  they  brought  to  the 
Plantation  and  bestowed  on  our  Govemour, 
and  upon  the  Captaine,  and  others.  And 
although  it  be  not  alwayes  so  plentiful!,  as  it. 
was  at  this  time  with  us,  yet  by  the  goodnesse 
of  God,  we  are  so  farre  from  want,  that  we  often 
wish  you  partakers  of  our  plentie." 

This  has  generally  been  termed  the  first 
autumnal  thanksgiving  in  New  England  and 
many  have  assumed  that  it  inaugurated  the 
thanksgiving  occasions  of  our  forebears.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  celebration  was  a  harvest 
festival,  pure  and  simple,  just  as  the  day  after 
Peregrine  White's  birthday  was  a  day  of  thanks- 
giving pure  and  simple.  No  religious  service  is 
spoken  of  in  connection  with  the  feast  at  which 
Massasoit  "  assisted  ",  and,  save  for  the  prayers 
before  breakfast  which,  Bradford  tells  us,  were 
always  held  at  this  period,  it  is  not  likely  that 
any  religious  service  was  observed.    The  Pil- 


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OLD  NEW  ENGLAND  475 

grims  did  not  mi-x  sports  and  religious  celebra- 
tions in  the  joyous  fashion  which  characterized 
Church  of  England  folk  in  Merrie  England. 

The  identification  of  Harvest  Home  with  the 
thanksgiving  service  of  the  Pilgrims  and  Puri- 
tans dates  from  October  16,  1632.  For,  that 
year,  there  had  been  a  very  cold  spring,  fol- 
lowed by  a  hot  and  extremely  dry  summer. 
So  passionately  desirous  were  the  colonists  for 
rain  that  they  could  not  refrain  from  tears  as, 
in  their  religious  assemblies,  they  called  upon 
God  to  water  their  crops.  And  then  came  the 
answer  to  their  prayers:  "  As  they  powred  out 
water  before  the  Lord  so  at  that  very  instant 
the  Lord  showred  down  water  on  their  Gardens 
and  Fields,  which  with  great  industry  they  had 
planted." '  Wherefore  they  celebrated  God's 
goodness  in  a  service  of  Thanksgiving. 

Still  another  picturesque  and  dramatic  thanks- 
giving of  these  early  days  was  that  occasioned 
by  the  arrival,  on  November  2, 1631,  of  the  ship 
Lyon,  which  bore  the  wife  and  family  of  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop.  The  military  were  summoned 
to  arms  to  do  honor  to  this  "  first  lady  of  the 
land  ",  and  for  divers  days  there  was  feasting, 
"  fat  hogs,  kids,  venison,  poultry,  geese,  and 
partridges  **  being  blithely  sacrificed  to  the 
occasion.  Yet  this  was  no  more  Thanksgiving, 
as  we  understand  the  day,  than  was  that  period 

i  Johnson's  "  Wonder-Working  Provident*,"  p.  58. 


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476    .  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

of  games  and  feasting  during  the  Pilgrims'  first 
golden  autumn  at  Plymouth.  Not  for  some 
years,  indeed,  was  church  thanksgiving  bound 
up  with  a  feast;  and  it  was  some  years  after 
that  before  the  time  chosen  for  the  celebration 
came  to  be  regularly  that  of  Harvest  Home. 

The  first  Thanksgiving  proclamation  among 
the  Plymouth  Colony  Records  to  make  mention 
of  the  harvest  is  that  of  1068.  The  words  are: 
"  It  has  pleased  God  in  some  comfortable  meas- 
ure to  blesse  us  in  the  fruites  of  the  earth." 
November  35  was  the  day  appointed  that  year; 
clearly,  then,  this  was  a  harvest  thanksgiving. 

In  Connecticut  the  Pilgrims'  idea  of  a  harvest 
thanksgiving  became  an  accepted  custom  about 
1649.  W.  De  Loss  Love,  Jr.,  Ph.  D-,  who  has 
written  a  very  interesting  and  scholarly  book  on 
the  "  Fast  and  Thanksgiving  Days  of  New 
England,"  •  declares  that  the  yearly  festival, 
as  now  appointed  by  the  several  states,  is  un- 
doubtedly a  Connecticut  institution.  For  the 
practice  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony, 
which  was  in  due  time  followed  by  New  Hamp- 
shire, was  to  ordain  thanksgiving  days  as 
result  of  causes  which  made  their  exercise 
natural.  Sewall,  as  late  as  1685,  may  be  found 
arguing  that  "  'twas  not  fit  upon  meer  Generals 
(as   the   Mercies   of   the  year)    to   Comand 

1  To  which  I  herebv  acknowledge  deep  indebtedness.  The  book 
is  published  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Company. 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  477 

Thanksgiving."  None  the  less,  the  autumn 
thanksgiving  was  usual,  even  in  this  colony, 
after  about  1660,  though  the  annual  and  harvest 
features  of  the  festival  were  overshadowed  by 
insistence  that  greater  spiritual  blessing  must 
necessarily  flow  from  thanks  given  for  some 
definite  blessing  than  from  any  stated  observ- 
ance of  a  recurring  festival. 

In  the  time  of  the  colonial  governors  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  unhappiness  in  Massachusetts 
over  some  of  the  Thanksgiving  proclamations. 
It  had  always  been  the  custom  to  have  the 
proclamation  read  by  the  Boston  ministers  on 
the  two  Sundays  previous  to  Thanksgiving  Day. 
Then  those  who  objected  to  the  wording  of  the 
proclamation  could  stay  away  from  meeting  — 
and  did.  Once,  however,  Governor  Hutchinson 
fooled  them  all  by  persuading  Reverend  John 
Bacon,  the  new- minister  of  the  Old  South  Church, 
and  Reverend  Ebenezer  Pemberton,  the  pastor 
of  the  New  Brick  Church,  which  the  governor 
himself  attended,  to  read,  a  week  ahead  of  time, 
the  proclamation  of  1771,  wherein  had  been 
placed  an  "  exceptionable  clause."  The  people 
at  the  Old  South  Church  stayed  after  service 
that  day  to  talk  over  the  proclamation  —  and 
the  minister.  Those  of  the  New  Brick  walked 
out  of  meeting  while  the  hateful  proclamation 
was  being  read.  They  had  no  mind  to  thank 
God  for  the  "  continuance  of  civil  and  religious 


zeacy  Google 


478  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

privileges  "  at  a  time  when  these  privileges  were 
being  cruelly  curtailed.  Many  of  the  min- 
isters would  not  read  the  proclamation  at  all  on 
this  occasion,  and  of  those  who  did  some  modi- 
fied it  by  leaving  out  this  "  exceptionable  clause  ", 
others  by  introducing,  as  did  the  Reverend 
Joseph  Sumner  of  Shrewsbury,  the  words  "  some 
of  our." 

Samuel  Sewall,  who  concerned  himself  with 
most  things  that  happened  in  Boston  during 
his  lifetime,  was  greatly  disturbed  when  the 
second  service  on  Thanksgiving  Day  seemed  in 
danger  of  being  crowded  out  by  the  social 
features  of  the  occasion.  In  1721  we  find  him 
discussing  the  matter  in  the  Council  Chamber 
at  Boston  with  Colonel  Townsend  and  resenting 
it  bitterly  that  the  latter  would  not  "  move  a 
jot  towards  having  two  ",  though,  on  this  par- 
ticular occasion,  two  services  were  held.  Evi- 
dently the  colonel  was  one  of  the  increasing 
number  of  New  Englanders  who  felt  that 
proper  justice  could  not  be  done  to  the  Thanks- 
giving dinner  when  it  was  crowded  in  between 
a  morning  and  an  afternoon  service.  Yet  it 
was  not  until  after  the  Revolution,  "  the  greatest 
force  of  the  century  for  the  development  of 
our  social  life,"  '  that  the  recreational  side  of 
Thanksgiving  Day  was  given  free  rein  and  fire- 
side games  were  permitted  in  the  home  circle. 

1  W.  De  Lobs  Love,  Jr.,  Ph.D. 


zeacy  Google 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  479 

Of  such  a  Thanksgiving  Day  in  a  New  England 
farmhouse  the  Quaker  poet  has  said: 

"  Ah!    on  Thanksgiving  day,  when  from  East 

and  from  West, 
From  North  and  from  South  come  the  pilgrim 

and  guest, 
When    the    gray-haired    New-Englander    sees 

round  his  board 
The  old  broken  links  of  affection  restored, 
When  the  care-wearied  man  seeks  his  mother 

once  more, 
And  the  worn  matron  smiles  where  the  girl 

smiled  before, 
What  moistens  the  lip  and  what  brightens  the 

eye? 
What  calls  back  the  past,  like  the  rich  pumpkin 

pie?  " 

Thanksgiving  without  pumpkin  pie  was  held 
to  be  unthinkable.  Yet  there  could  be  no 
pumpkin  pie  without  molasses;  because  Col- 
chester, Connecticut,  did  not  receive  its  supply 
of  molasses  in  season,  it  voted,  in  1705,  to  put 
off  its  Thanksgiving  from  the  first  to  the  second 
Thursday  of  November!  Pumpkin  pies  thus 
featured  were  usually  baked  in  square  tins, 
having  only  four  corner  pieces  to  each  pie! 

Second  only  to  the  pumpkin  pie  in  importance 
at  such  a  thanksgiving  feast  as  Whittier  sings 
was  the  turkey  which  had  been  fattened  for  the 
occasion  and  which,  when  slowly  roasted  before 


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480 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


the  open  fire  and  painstakingly  basted  from  the 
dripping  pan  beneath,  was  fit  to  be  the  lord  of 
any  feast.  Chicken  there  was,  too,  though  al- 
ways in  the  form  of  chicken-pie,  and  vegetables 
of  every  sort,  with  raisins  and  citron,  walnuts 
and  popcorn,  apples  and  cider  galore.  Surely 
Sewall  could  not  have  really  wished  joys  such 
as  these  to  be  sacrificed  to  a  second  service  in 
the  meeting-house! 

Yet  it  is  only  in  our  own  time  that  Thai 
giving  has  taken  on  more  the  character  of  a 
holiday  than  of  the  Sabbath  in  New  England. 
As  late  as  1791  we  find  the  law  of  Connecticut 
providing: 

"That  on  the  Days  appointed  for  public 
Fasting  or  Thanksgiving  by  Proclamation 
the  Governour  of  this  State:  all  Persons  resi- 
ding within  this  State,  shall  abstain  from  every 
kind  of  servile  Labour,  and  Recreation,  Works 
of  Necessity  and  Mercy  excepted;  and  any 
Person  who  shall  be  guilty  of  a  Breach  of  this 
Act,  being  duly  convicted  thereof,  shall  be  fined 
in  a  Sum  not  exceeding  Two  Dollars,  nor  less 
than  One  Dollar.  Provided  this  Act  shall  not 
be  construed  to  prevent  public  Posts  and  Stages 
from  Travelling  on  said  Days." 

In  this  piece  of  legislation,  Thanksgiving,  it 
is  observed,  is  linked  up  with  Fast  Day.  Until 
the  last  century  two  services  were  maintained 
in  most  New  England  communities  on  all  days 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  481 

appointed  for  fasting,  and  until  the  time  of  the 
Revolution,  most  of  the  people  abstained  from 
food  until  after  the  second  service;  then,  as 
evening  drew  on,  they  sat  down  to  a  simple 
repast  of  cold  meat,  bread,  or  "  hasty  pudding." 
Fast  Day,  however,  usually  came  in  the  spring, 
just  as  Thanksgiving  Day  was  an  autumn 
festival,  and  "  one  of  the  first  signs  of  the 
changing  sentiment  as  to  the  day,"  Doctor 
Love  points  out,  "  was  the  indulgence  in  visit- 
ing, walking  abroad  in  the  fields,  inspection  of 
barns  and  herds,  discussion  among  neighbors 
of  plans  for  the  planting,  much  of  which  the 
spring  season  suggested."  This  was  a  long 
way  from  such  days  of  fasting  as  Cotton  Mather 
advocated,  prayerful  periods  which  had  special 
reference,  in  most  cases,  to  scourges  or  afflictions 
of  various  kinds.  Thus  a  visitation  of  canker- 
worms  was  responsible  for  the  Massachusetts 
Fast  Day  of  June  22,  1665,  and  on  November 
15,  1649,  there  was  fasting  in  the  Plymouth 
Colony  by  reason  of  an  epidemic  of  "  chin- 
cough  &  the  pockes."  An  especially  solemn 
fast  day  in  Massachusetts  was  that  of  October 
80,  1727,  a  Monday  when  the  Boston  churches 
were  crowded  all  day  long  by  a  terrified  people 
whom  an  earthquake  had  aroused  in  the  dead 
of  night.  Cotton  Mather  delivered  on  this  occa- 
sion a  sermon  called  "  The  Terror  of  the  Lord." 
During  the  witchcraft  persecutions,  Cotton 


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Mather  spent  a  large  part  of  his  time  fasting 
and  preaching  and  praying.  He  believed 
the  efficacy  of  prayer  and  fasting  in  curing  the 
afflicted.  The  climax  both  of  the  witchci 
fasts  and  of  the  witchcraft  persecutions 
on  January  15,  1696-1097,  when  Samuel  Sewall 
put  up  his  bill  of  confession  and  humbled  him- 
self in  public  for  having  done  wrong  in  accepting 
spectral  evidence  against  the  witches.  Boston's 
history  contains  no  finer  example  of  manly 
self-abasement  than  this. 

I  have  said  that  Fast  Day  usually  came  in 
the  spring,  as  Thanksgiving  Day  usually  came 
in  autumn.  But  this  was  not  invariably  the 
case;  hence  the  final  appointment  of  a  Good 
Friday  fast  in  Connecticut.  Good  churchman 
though  he  was,  Washington,  in  1795,  appointed 
February  19  to  be  the  national  Thanksgiving 
Day.  The  date  chanced  to  fall  on  the  second 
day  of  Lent,  and  Connecticut  Episcopalians 
refused  to  keep  the  feast;  and  they  refused; 
also,  to  observe  a  fast  day  which  fell  in  Eastt 
week.  Reverend  Samuel  Seabury,  then  tin 
bishop  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut 
and  Rhode  Island,  justified  the  stand  he  and  his 
people  had  taken  on  this  matter  by  pointing 
out  that  it  was  exceedingly  disagreeable  to 
Episcopalians  "  to  observe  days  of  Thanks- 
giving in  Lent  .  .  .  and  equally  disagreeabli 
to  be  called  on  to  observe  days  of  Fasting 


i 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  483 

the  season  appointed  by  the  church  to  praise 
God  for  the  resurrection  of  Christ  and  the 
happy  prospects  of  eternal  life  opened  to  us  by 
him."  Governor  Huntington  and  Bishop  Sea- 
bury  were  very  good  friends,  however,  and  out 
of  desire  to  avoid  the  recurrence  of  a  difficult 
situation,  the  head  of  the  state  allowed  Good 
Friday  —  the  day  which  particularly  recom- 
mends itself  to  Episcopalians  as  a  fast  day  — 
to  be  his  choice  also  for  a  fast.  In  subsequent 
years  this  pacificatory  plan  was  followed  by  other 
governors,  with  the  result  that  in  Connecticut 
Good  Friday  has,  for  more  than  a  century  now, 
been  a  civil  holiday  as  well  as  a  religious  festival. 

In  Massachusetts,  whose  first  annual  Fast 
Day  occurred  April  19,  1694,  Patriots'  Day 
was  substituted  for  the  older  holiday  for  the 
first  time  on  April  19, 1894  —  just  two  hundred 
years  later.  For  about  forty  years  there  had 
been  an  agitation  against  the  day,  and  Gov- 
ernor Russell  in  his  Fast  Day  proclamation  of 
the  year  before  (the  last  ever  issued  in  Massa- 
chusetts) so  strongly  urged  the  abandonment 
of  a  day  which  had  "  ceased  to  be  devoted  gener- 
ally to  the  purposes  of  its  origin  but  is  appropri- 
ated and  used  as  a  holiday  for  purposes  at 
variance  with  its  origin,  its  name  and  its  solemn 
character  "  that  the  people  very  properly  decided 
to  continue  the  travesty  no  longer. 

Thanksgiving  Day,  however,  seems  to  become 


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484 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


constantly  dearer  to  New  Englanders  and  those 
of  New  England  origin.  Nor  does  the  religious 
aspect  of  the  day  grow  less  important  with  the 
passing  of  the  years.  "  All  is  hushed  of  busi- 
ness about  me,"  wrote  Wendell  Phillips  on 
Thanksgiving  Day,  1841,  to  an  English  friend; 
"  the  devout  pass  the  morning  at  church;  those 
who  have  wandered  to  other  cities  hurry  back 
to  worship  to-day  where  their  fathers  knelt, 
and  gather  sons  and  grandsons,  to  the  littlest 
prattler,  under  the  roof-tree  to  —  shall  I  break 
the  picture?  —  cram  as  much  turkey  and  plum- 
pudding  as  possible;  a  sort  of  compromise  by 
Puritan  love  of  good  eating  for  denying  itsel 
that '  wicked  papistne  ',  Christmas." 

Christmas  was  not  the  only  "  papistrie 
against  which  the  Puritan  sternly  set  his  face 
and  after  all  this  lapse  of  time,  Sewall's  indig- 
nant blusterings  over  certain  attempts  to  cele- 
brate Shrove  Tuesday  in  Boston  compel  our 
attention.  On  this  last  day  before  Lent  it 
was  formerly  the  custom  to  go  to  confession  —  to 
shrive  oneself ;  after  which  all  sorts  of  merriment 
began.  Shrovetide  in  England  corresponded  to 
the  Italian  carnival  season  and,  even  after  the 
Reformation  had  put  an  end  to  the  confessional 
practice,  the  English  clung  to  the  habit  of 
festivity.  The  eating  of  pancakes  or  doughnuts, 
and  the  sacri6ce  of  cocks  was  part  of  the  cere- 
monial of  the  season. 


y 


„=  .Google 


OLD    NEW   ENGLAND  485 

"  But  hark,  I  hear  the  Pancake-bell 
And  fritters  make  a  gallant  smell." 

But  in  the  nostrils  of  Cotton  Mather  this 
"  gallant  smell  "  was  nothing  but  a  noisome 
stench.  The  eating  of  pancakes  he  construed 
as  a  relic  of  Mariolatry  and  the  sacrifice  of  cocks 
as  rank  paganism.  In  his  "  Advice  from  the 
Watch  Tower  ",  he  declares:  "  It  is  to  be  hoped, 
The  Shroves  Tuesday  Vanities,  of  making  Cakes 
to  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  and  Sacrificing  Cocks 
to  the  Pagan  Idol  Tuisco;  and  other  Super- 
stitions Condemned  in  the  Reformed  Churches; 
will  find  few  Abetters,  in  a  Countrey  declar- 
ing for  our  Degree  of  Reformation.  Should 
such  things  become  usual  among  us,  the  great 
God  would  soon  say  with  Indignation,  How  art 
thou  turned  Unto  the  Degenerate  Plant  of  a 
Strange  Vine  unto  me!  " 

One  of  the  few  English  holidays  ungrudgingly 
observed  by  the  Puritans  was  St.  Valentine's 
Day.  From  the  sixteenth  century,  in  the  mother 
country,  the  first  person  of  the  opposite  sex 
seen  on  this  morning  was  the  observer's  valen- 
tine. We  read  of  Madam  Pepys  lying  in  bed 
for  a  long  time  on  St.  Valentine's  Day,  with  her 
eyes  tightly  closed,  lest  she  see  one  of  the 
painters  who  were  gilding  her  new  mantelpiece, 
and  be  forced  to  have  him  for  her  valentine. 
Id  the  New  World,  we  find  Governor  Win- 


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486 


SOCIAL   LIFE    IN 


throp  writing  to  his  wife  about  "  challenging  a 
valentine,"  and  Anna  Green  Winslow  record- 
ing in  her  diary  (February  14,  1772):  "Valen- 
tine day.  My  valentine  was  an  old  country 
plow-joger."  Which  undoubtedly  means  that 
the  first  person  little  Anna  chanced  to  see  that 
morning  was  "  an  old  country  plow-joger." 

Another  old-world  anniversary,  which  died 
very  hard,  was  "  Powder -Plot  Day,"  November 
5,  on  which  occasion  was  celebrated  the  execu- 
tion of  Guy  Fawkes,  following  his  treasonable 
plan  (in  1605)  to  blow  up  the  House  of  Parlia- 
ment out  of  revenge  for  the  edict  banishing  the 
priests  from  England.  Judge  Sewall  refers  to 
one  of  these  celebrations  (in  1685)  as  if  it  were 
a  regular  occurrence: 

"Mr.  Allin  preached,  Nov.  5,  1685  — fin- 
ished his  Text  1  Jn.  I.  9.  mentioned  not  a  word 
in  Prayer  or  Preaching  that  I  took  notice  of 
with  respect  to  Gun-Powder  Treason.  .  .  .  Al- 
though it  rained  hard,  yet  there  was  a  Bonfire 
made  on  the  Comon,  about  50  attended  it. 
Friday  night  (November  6)  being  fair,  about  two 
hundred  hallowed  about  a  Fire  on  the  Comon." 

In  the  Weekly  Journal  of  November  11,  1735, 
we  find  the  following  account  of  the  anniversary 
as  it  was  observed  that  year  in  Boston : 

"  On  Wednesday  last  being  the  5th  of  Novem- 
ber, the  Guns  were  fired  at  Castle  William,  in 
Commemoration  of  the  happy  and  remarkable 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  487 

Deliverance  of  our  Nation  from  Popery  and 
Slavery,  by  the  Discovery  of  the  Gun  Powder 
Plot  in  the  year  1605;  and  in  the  Evening  there 
were  Bonfires,  and  other  Rejoycings." 

The  original  manner  of  celebrating  this  day 
in  New  England  was  to  cany  in  a  procession 
the  effigies  of  the  pope  and  the  devil  and  at 
the  end  of  the  march  to  burn  these  symbols, 
which  to  the  Puritan  were  alike  hateful.  But 
as  the  eighteenth  century  advanced,  the  cele- 
brations became  so  boisterous  as  to  cause  great 
anxiety  to  the  authorities.  In  Boston  there 
were  now  rival  processions,  one  from  the  North 
End  and  one  from  the  South  End  and,  though 
each  carried  images  of  the  pope  and  the  devil  as 
before,  these  were  burned  only  as  the  climax  of  a 
skirmish  between  the  opposing  factions.  John 
Rowe  in  his  diary  mentions  a  fatality  which 
happened  to  a  child  as  an  outcome  of  the  skir- 
mish in  1764,  an  accident  to  which  we  owe  the 
more  seemly  celebrations  for  the  years  imme- 
diately ensuing. 

As  the  time  of  the  Revolution  approached, 
images  of  unpopular  officials,  like  Governor 
Hutchinson  and  General  Gage,  were  added  on 
Plot  Day  to  those  of  the  pope  and  the  devil  and 
burned  with  gusto,  as  the  evening  drew  to  a  close. 
The  almanacs  made  it  part  of  their  business  to 
keep  the  zest  for  this  festival  alive  by  publish- 
ing, each  recurring  November  5,  such  lines  as: 


;e;)yGoogle 


488  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

"  Gun  Powder  Plot 
We  ha'n't  forgot." 

and  so  well  did  the  tradition  of  the  day  endure 
that  Plot  Night  was  being  celebrated  in  Ports- 
mouth, New  Hampshire,  as  late  as  1892!  Even 
at  the  present  time,  something  of  carnival  nature 
is  done,  on  the  evening  of  November  fifth, 
this  picturesque  old  town  by  the  sea,  though 
the  boys  who  blow  horns  and  carry  about 
pumpkin-lanterns  have  so  little  knowledge  of 
what  they  arc  commemorating  that  they  call 
their  festival  Pork  Night! 

In  most  of  the  large  New  England  towns,  as 
well  as  in  Boston,  the  observance  of  this  day 
died  very  hard-  In  the  diaries  of  the  period 
may  be  found  many  casual  references  to  it. 
The  Reverend  Samuel  Deane  of  Portland  writes 
in  his  journal:  "  1770  November  5  Several 
popes  and  devils  tonight  ";  "  1771  November  5 
No  popes  nor  devils  here  tonight  at  my  house." 
The  Reverend  Ezra  Stiles  speaks  of  the  custom 
at  Newport  in  1771,  saying:  "  Powder  Plot,  — 
Pope  etc  carried  about " ;  and  again  on  November 
5,  1774,  he  says:  "This  Afternoon  three  popes 
&ct  paraded  tho*  the  streets,  &  in  the  Evening 
they  were  consumed  in  a  Bonfire  as  usual  — 
among  others  were  Ld.  North,  Gov.  Hutchinson 
&  Gen.  Gage."  John  Adams,  attending  court 
at  Salem  on  Wednesday,  November  5, 1766,  says : 


tizeaEy  Google 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  480 

"  Spent  the  evening  at  Mr.  Pynchon's,  with 
Farnham,  Sewall,  Sargeant,  Col.  Saltonstall 
&ct.  very  agreeably.  Punch,  wine,  bread  and 
cheese,  apples,  pipes,  tobacco  and  Popes  and 
bonfires  this  evening  at  Salem,  and  a  swarm  of 
tumultuous  people  attending." 

Coffin,  in  his  valuable  "  History  of  Newbury  ", 
gives  a  description  of  a  Plot  Day  observance 
which  is  worth  quoting  because  it  is  typical 
of  such  celebrations  in  all  New  England  towns 
at  this  period,  as  well  as  because  it  marks  the 
passing  of  the  custom: 

"  The  last  public  celebration  of  Pope  Day 
occurred  in  1775  and  went  off  with  a  great 
flourish.  In  the  day  time  companies  of  little 
boys  might  be  seen,  in  various  parts  of  the  town, 
with  their  little  popes,  dressed  up  in  the  most 
grotesque  and  fantastic  manner,  which  they 
carried  about,  some  on  boards  and  some  on 
little  carriages,  for  their  own  and  others'  amuse- 
ment. But  the  great  exhibition  was  reserved 
for  the  night,  in  which  young  men  as  well  as 
boys  participated.  They  first  constructed  a 
huge  vehicle,  varying,  at  times,  from  twenty 
to  forty  feet  long,  eight  or  ten  wide  and  five 
or  six  high,  from  the  lower  to  the  upper  platform, 
on  the  front  of  which  they  erected  a  paper  lan- 
tern, capacious  enough  to  hold,  in  addition  to 
the  lights,  five  or  six  persons.  Behind  that, 
as  large  as  life  sat  the  mimic  pope,  and  several 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


other  personages,  monks,  friars  and  so  forth. 
Last  but  not  least,  stood  an  image  of  what  was 
designed  to  be  a  representation  of  old  Nick 
himself,  furnished  with  a  pair  of  huge  horns, 
holding  in  his  hand  a  pitchfork  and  otherwise 
accoutred,  with  all  the  frightful  ugliness  that 
their  ingenuity  could  devise.  Their  next  step, 
after  they  had  mounted  their  ponderous  vehicle 
on  four  wheels,  chosen  their  officers,  captain, 
first  and  second  lieutenant,  purser,  and  so 
forth,  placed  a  boy  under  the  platform  to  elevate 
and  move  round  at  proper  intervals  the  movable 
head  of  the  pope,  and  attached  ropes  to  the 
front  part  of  the  machine,  was,  to  take  up 
their  line  of  march  through  the  principal  streets 
of  the  town.  Sometimes,  in  addition  to  the 
images  of  the  pope  and  his  company,  there 
might  be  found,  on  the  same  platform,  half  a 
dozen  dancers,  and  a  fiddler,  whose 

"  '  Hornpipes,  jigs,  strathspeys,  and  reels, 
Put  life  and  mettle  in  their  heels,' 

together  with  a  large  crowd,  who  made  up  a  long 
procession.  Their  custom  was  to  call  at  the 
principal  houses  in  various  parts  of  the  town, 
ring  their  bells,  cause  the  pope  to  elevate  his 
head,  and  look  round  upon  the  audience,  and 
repeat  the  following  lines: 

"  '  The  fifth  of  November 
As  you  well  remember, 


OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  491 

Was  gunpowder  treason  and  plot; 

I  know  no  reason  why  the  gunpowder  treason 

Should  ever  be  forgot.'  " 

Yet,  a  very  good  reason  for  allowing  Pope  Day 
to  languish  and  the  treason  it  celebrated  to  be 
"  forgot  "  was  found  in  the  fact  that  the  French, 
who  helped  us  greatly  during  the  Revolution,  did 
not  enjoy  the  reflections  upon  the  Church  of 
Rome  and  its  pope,  which  were  inseparable 
from  the  day  as  thus  observed. 

Newport,  Rhode  Island,  long  cherished  one 
very  picturesque  custom,  which  had  been  brought 
over  from  England,  —  that  of  watching  the 
sun  "  rise  out  of  the  ocean  "  on  Easter  morn- 
ing. On  this  anniversary  the  people  of  the  town 
crowded  the  beach  to  see  if  the  sun  would 
"dance"  as  it  came  up;  for  if  it  "danced", 
the  year  was  sure  to  be  a  lucky  one  for  those 
who  watched.  Accordingly,  there  was  great 
desire  that  the  orb  of  day  might  come  up  bright 
and  clear.  When  this  had  been  accomplished, 
the  people  on  the  shore  joyously  clapped  their 
hands  and  sang  the  doxology.  Mrs.  John  King 
Van  Rensselaer,  in  whose  delightful  book, "  New- 
port, Our  Social  Capital,"  I  find  a  record  of  this 
curious  old  custom,  comments  that  the  observ- 
ance must  have  been  brought  from  England  by 
the  first  settlers,  who,  when  they  lived  in  their 
native  land,  were  wont  to  "  watch  for  the  rising 
of  the  Easter  sun."    Sir  John  Suckling  says:  — 


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4»2  SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 

"  But  oh,  she  dances  in  such  a  way, 
No  sun  upon  an  Easter  day 
Is  half  so  fine  a  sight." 

Trick-playing  on  April  Fool's  Day  also  sur- 
vived in  New  England,  though  Judge  Sewall 
repeatedly  inveighs  against  it.  On  April  I, 
1719,  he  wrote: 

"  In  the  morning  I  dehorted  Sam  Hirst  and 
Grindell  Rawson  from  playing  Idle  tricks  be- 
cause 'twas  the  first  of  April:  They  were  the 
greatest  fools  that  did  so.  N.  E.  men  came 
hither  to  avoid  anniversary  days,  the  keeping 
of  them  such  as  25th  of  Deer.  How  displeasing 
must  it  be  to  God  the  giver  of  our  Time  to  keep 
anniversary  days  to  play  the  fool  with  ourselves 
and  others."  Ten  years  earlier  the  judge  had 
written  to  a  Boston  schoolmaster  requesting  him 
to  "  insinuate  into  the  Scholars  the  Defiling 
and  Provoking  nature  of  such  a  Foolish  Prac- 
tice "  as  playing  tricks  on  April  first. 

Days  which  might  be  "  improved  *\  either  by 
prayer  or  by  poetizing,  were  much  more  to 
Sewall's  taste.  He  was  no  kill-joy  but  be  liked 
to  have  a  substantial  and  non-papistical  reason 
for  dedicating  perfectly  good  time  to  the  pur- 
suit of  pleasure.  The  birth  of  a  baby — or 
of  a  century  —  impressed  him  as  such  a  reason. 
So  in  honor  of  the  fonner  he  repeatedly  brewed 
"  groaning  beer  ";  and  when  a  chance  came  to 
him  to  celebrate  the  latter  he  wrote  the  fol- 


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OLD   NEW   ENGLAND  493 

lowing  verses  and  had  a  crier  recite  them  through 
Boston's  streets: 

"  Once  more!    Our  God,  vouchsafe  to  Shine: 
Tame  Thou  the  Rigour  of  our  Clime. 
Make  haste  with  thy  Impartial  Light, 
And  terminate  this  long  dark  Night. 

"  Let  the  transplanted  English  Vine 
Spread  further  still:  still  call  it  Thine: 
Prune  it  with  Skill :  for  yield  it  can 
More  Fruit  to  Thee  the  Husbandman. 

"  Give  the  poor  Indians  Eyes  to  sec 
The  Light  of  Life:  and  set  them  free; 
That  they  Religion  may  profess, 
Denying  all  Ungodliness. 

"  From  hard'ned  Jews  the  Vail  remove; 
Let  them  their  Martyr'd  Jesus  love; 
And  Homage  unto  Him  afford, 
Because  He  is  their  Rightfull  Lord. 

"  So  false  Religion  shall  decay, 
And  Darkness  fly  before  bright  Day; 
So  Men  shall  God  in  Christ  adore; 
And  worship  Idols  vain,  no  more. 

"  So  Asia  with  Africa, 
Europa  with  America: 
All  Four,  in  Consort  join'd,  shall  Sing 
New  Songs  of  Praise  to  Christ  our  King." 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


CHAPTER  XV 


CHRISTMAS    UNDER   THE  BAN 


THE   first  Christmas  Day  in  the    history 
of   New  England   is   thus   described  by 
Governor  William  Bradford  in  his  famous 
Log-Book: 

"  The  day  called  Christmas  Day  ye  Govr  cal'd 
them  out  to  worke  (as  was  used)  but  ye  moste 
of  this  new  company  excused  themselves,  and 
saide  yt  went  against  their  consciences  to  work 
on  yt  Day.  So  ye  Govr  tould  them  that  if 
they  made  it  mater  of  conscience,  he  would 
spare  them  till  they  were  better  informed.  So 
he  led  away  ye  rest  and  left  them;  but  when 
they  came  home  at  noon  from  their  work  he 
found  them  in  ye  street  at  play  openly,  some 
pitching  ye  bar,  and  some  at  stoolball  and  such 
like  sports.  So  he  went  to  them  and  took  away 
their  implements  and  tould  them  it  was  against 
his  conscience  that  they  should  play  and  others 
work."  Most  modern  writers,  quoting  Brad- 
ford on  Christmas,  stop  at  this  point,  the  better 
to  bring  out  that  rare  thing,  a  Puritan  joke. 
But  to  understand  the  early  attitude  toward 


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OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  495 

Christmas,  it  is  necessary  to  add  two  more 
sentences  from  the  Log-Book.  "  If  they  made 
the  keeping  of  it  matter  of  devotion,  let  them 
keep  their  houses,  but  ther  should  be  no  game-  ' 
ing  or  revelling  in  ye  streets.  Since  which  time 
nothing  hath  been  attempted  that  way,  at  least 
oipenly"  The  italics  are  mine;  they  serve,  I 
think,  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  Bradford  and 
his  men  were  not  at  all  averse  to  the  spirit  of 
Christmas,  —  only  to  the  abuses  of  the  festival 
as  they  had  known  them  in  England. 

Bradford's  attitude  towards  Christmas  might 
be  compared  to  that  of  Martin  Luther.  In  the 
case  of  this  and  every  other  relic  of  "  wicked 
papistrie  ",  Luther's  protest  was  not  against  the 
spirit  but  the  prostitution  of  that  spirit.  In 
which  connection  it  were  well  for  us  to  recall 
that  one  of  the  most  significant  and  character- 
istic pictures  of  Luther  represents  him  sitting, 
on  Christmas  Eve,  in  his  family  circle,  with  his 
wife  at  his  side,  and  a  lighted  Christmas  tree 
before  him.  The  Father  of  the  Reformation  is 
playing  the  lute  and,  amidst  fruit  and  bread, 
can  be  descried,  on  the  table,  a  huge  tankard 
filled  with  ale!  Not  Luther,  then,  but  Calvin, 
with  whom  Cotton  Mather  was  wont  to  sweeten 
his  mouth  before  going  to  bed,  put  Christmas 
under  the  ban. 

Those  who  honored  Calvin  more  than  they 
honored  Christ  were  able,  being  a  majority,  to 


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496  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

impose  their  will  upon  early  New  England  in 
the  matter  of  keeping  or  failing  to  keep  Christ- 
mas. In  1659  the  General  Court  of  Massachu- 
setts forbade,  under  a  penalty  of  five  shillings 
for  each  offense,  the  observation  of  "  any  such 
day  as  Christmas  or  the  like,  either  by  for- 
bearing of  labour,  feasting,  or  any  other  way." 
Towards  the  end  of  the  century,  however,  when 
the  population  of  the  towns  had  become  less 
homogeneous  and  the  number  of  Church  of 
England  men  had  greatly  increased,  this  law 
became  so  difficult  to  enforce  that  in  1681  it 
was  repealed.  From  this  time  on,  Christmas 
began  to  reassert  itself,  to  the  immense  chagrin 
of  Samuel  Sewall,  who  in  his  diary  chronicles 
for  several  successive  years  that  carts  come  to 
town  on  Christmas  Day  and  that  the  shops  are 
open  as  usual.  "  Some,  somehow,  observe  the 
day,  but  are  vexed,  I  believe,  that  the  Body 
of  the  People  profane  it;  and  blessed  be  God! 
no  Authority  yet  to  compell  them  to  keep  it." 

The  next  year  the  shops  and  the  carts  give 
Sewall  great  pleasure  again,  although  Governor 
Andros  does  go  to  the  Episcopal  service  with  a 
redcoat  on  his  right  and  a  captain  on  his  left. 
Eleven  years  later,  in  1697,  on  the  same  day: 
"  Joseph  tells  me  that  though  most  of  the  Boys 
went  to  the  Church,  yet  he  went  not."  In  1705 
and  1706,  to  the  judge's  relief,  enter  the  carts 
once  more  on  their  way  to  open  shops.     But 


I 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  497 

in  1714  Christmas  fell  on  Saturday,  and  because 
of  its  observance  at  the  church,  the  judge,  on 
the  following  day,  —  the  Sabbath,  —  goes  to 
meeting  and  sits  at  the  Lord's  table  with  Mr. 
John  Webb,  that  he  may  "  put  respect  upon 
that  affronted  despised  Lord's  day.  For  the 
Church  of  England  had  the  Lord's  supper 
yesterday,  the  last  day  of  the  week,  but  will 
not  have  it  to-day,  the  day  that  the  Lord  has 
made."  Some  New  Englanders,  it  seems,  now 
felt  free  to  observe  in  their  own  way  "  the  sea- 
son wherein  our  Saviour's  birth  is  celebrated." 
What  Sewall  quite  failed  to  realize,  of  course, 
was  that  a  man  might  be  just  as  sincere  a  Chris- 
tian and  just  as  good  a  Puritan  as  he  was  and 
still  desire  to  celebrate  Christmas.  George 
Wither  went  to  prison  for  his  Puritanism;  yet 
it  was  Wither  who  wrote: 

"  So  now  is  come  our  joyful'st  feast, 

Let  every  man  be  jolly; 
Each  room  with  ivy  leaves  is  drest, 

And  every  post  with  holly. 
Though  some  churls  at  our  mirth  repine, 
Round  your  foreheads  garlands  twine, 
Drown  sorrow  in  a  cup  of  wine, 

And  let  us  all  be  merry. 

"  Now  all  our  neighbors'  chimneys  smoke, 
And  Christmas  blocks  are  burning; 
Their  ovens  they  with  baked-meats  choke, 
And  all  their  apits  are  turning. 


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498  SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

Without  the  door  let  sorrow  lie; 
And  if  for  cold  it  hap  to  die. 
We'll  bury  it  in  Christmas  pie, 
And  evermore  be  merry." 

That  Sewall  was  no  "  churl  "  but  a  jolly  soul 
with  infinite  capacity  for  social  enjoyment  we 
have  repeatedly  seen;  nothing  could  have 
appealed  to  him  more  than  "  Christmas  pie." 
But  Christmas,  in  his  mind,  was  bound  up  with 
the  Established  Church;  and  for  the  Estab- 
lished Church  he  had  no  manner  of  use.  More- 
over, and  this  is  the  crux  of  the  matter,  Christ- 
mas as  a  time  of  boisterous  revelry  had  almost 
buried,  in  England,  Christmas  as  the  celebration 
of  the  Saviour's  birth.  To  sympathize  with 
Sewall  and  Cotton  Mather  in  their  opposition 
to  the  introduction  of  a  Yuletide  spirit  into  New 
England  the  reader  needs  to  return  briefly  to 
a  typical  Christmas  in  old  England  at  this 
period  and  look  in  on  a  roistering  crowd  cele- 
brating Christmas  Eve  in  a  Fleet  Street  inn.1 

Because  it  is  Christmas  lime  and  high  carnival, 
all  sorts  of  iniquities  are  now  given  full  rein. 
Wandering  minstrels  sing  their  ribald  songs 
unrebuked;  revellers  bear  in  the  Yule  log,  about 
which  they  will  soon  dance  with  quite  as  much 
abandon  as  did  their  Saxon  ancestors;  and  on 
the  gambling  table  in  the  middle  of  the  room 

1  "  Fust  nud  Thanksgiving  Daya  of  New  England." 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  499 

stands  a  wassail  bowl  which  will  have  to  be 
refilled  a  score  of  times  as  the  night  wears  on 
towards  the  blessed  Christmas  morn.  In  the 
carols  that  choristers  outside  will  sing  the  theme 
is  not  praise  of  Christ  the  Saviour,  but  baccha- 
nalian salutation  to  Christ  the  Lord  of  Misrule: 

"  The  darling  of  the  world  is  come 
And  fit  it  is  we  find  a  rooine 
To  welcome  him.    The  nobler  part 
Of  all  the  house  here  is  the  heart, 
Which  we  will  give  him;  and  bequeath 
This  hollie  and  this  ivie  wreath 
To  do  him  honour,  who's  our  King, 
And  Lord  of  all  this  revelling." 

But  even  this  would  not  have  been  so  bad  if, 
the  next  day,  there  had  been  real  reverence  for 
the  true  meaning  of  Christmas.  Yet  right  in 
the  midst  of  the  service  at  a  near-by  church  this 
sort  of  thing  might  happen,  according  to  a 
chronicler x  of  the  time:  "  Then  marche  this 
heathen  company  towards  the  church  and 
churchyard,  their  pipers  piping,  drummers  thun- 
dering, their  bells  jyngling,  their  hobby  horses 
and  other  monsters  skirmishing  amongst  the 
crowd,  and  in  this  sort  they  goe  into  the  church, 
(though  the  minister  bee  at  prayer  or  preaching,) 
dancing  and  swinging  their  handkerchiefs  over 


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500 


SOCIAL  LIFE   IN 


their  beads  .  .  .  with  such  a  confused  noise 
that  no  man  can  hear  his  own  voice.  Then 
the  foolish  people,  they  look,  they  stare,  they 
laugh,  they  fleer,  and  mount  upon  forms  and 
pews  to  see  these  goodly  pageants  solemnized 
in  this  sort.  Then  after  this  about  the  church 
they  go  again  and  again,  and  so  forth  into  the 
churchyard,  where  they  have  commonly  their 
banquetting  tables  set  up." 

Most  of  us  think  of  the  Christmas  revels  of 
old  England  as  the  beautiful  thing  Washington 
Irving  found  them.  We  do  not  realize  that,  at 
the  time  New  England  was  settled,  the  Amen  of 
a  Christmas  Day  Nunc  dimitiis:  "  Lord,  now 
lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  ac- 
cording to  thy  word,  for  mine  eyes  have  seen 
thy  salvation,"  was  quite  as  likely  as  not 
to  be: 

"  Yule,  yule,  yule, 
Three  puddings  in  a  pule 
Crack  nouts  and  cry  yule." 


The  Plymouth  Pilgrims,  Church  of  England 
folk  at  heart,  went  no  further  in  their  condemna- 
tion of  Christmas  than  to- let  the  day  pass 
without  observing  it.  In  Connecticut,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  was  a  law,  Peters  tells  us, 
forbidding  the  reading  of  Common  Prayer, 
keeping  Christmas  or  saints'  days,  making 
minced   pies,   dancing,   playing  cards,  or  per- 


I 


OLD   NEW  ENGLAND  501 

forming  on  any  instrument  of  music*  except 
the  drum,  trumpet  and  Jew's-harp.  Yet  Christ- 
mas in  Connecticut  came  into  its  own  sooner  than 
in  many  other  parts  of  New  England,  owing, 
very  largely,  to  the  influence  of  Bishop  Seabury. 
"  No  member  of  a  church  household  now 
willingly  remained  away  from  the  special  serv- 
ice, which,  with  the  Sacrament,  gave  the  day 
its  highest  character,"  writes  Mrs.  Shelton,1 
"  and  the  Christmas-eve  service  was  of  interest 
to  many  outside  the  flock.  The  dressing  of 
evergreens  and  the  windows  lighted  by  rows 
of  candles  made  an  attraction  irresistible  to 
the  meeting-house  children,  who  were  allowed 
to  attend  this  one  church  service  of  the  year." 

To  follow  in  the  diary  of  John  Rowe,  the 
Boston  merchant,  entries  concerning  successive 
Christmasses  just  before  and  during  the  Revo- 
lution throws  considerable  light  on  the  change 
that  was  taking  place,  even  in  Boston,  towards 
this  festival.  Rowe  was  an  Episcopalian  and 
so  wrote: 

"Dec.  25,  1764.  Christmas  Day.  Went 
to  Church.  Mr  Walter  read  prayers  &  Mr. 
Hooper  preached  from  1st  Chap,  of  the  Gospel 
of  St.  John  &  17th  Verse.  I  was  much  pleased 
with  the  Discourse.  A  great  number  of  people 
at  Church.  Mr.  Hooper  sent  the  Box  to  me  to 
collect  for  the  poor."      The  records  for  1765 

1  In  "  Th«  Salt-Box  Hmuw." 


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502 


SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 


are  lost  and  on  Christmas  Day  1766  Mr.  Rowe 
put  nothing  in  his  diary.  Perhaps  the  ample 
home  dinner  that  always  followed  his  attend- 
ance at  church  was  too  much  for  him.  The 
entry  for  1767  is:  "  Dec.  25.  Christmas  Day  — 
very  cold.  I  went  to  church  this  forenoon. 
Mr.  Walter  read  prayers  &  preached  a  very 
clever  sermon  from  2d  Chap.  St.  Luke  &  32d 
verse.  I  applaud  Mr.  Walter's  Behavior  very 
much."  Dec.  25,  1768:  "Sunday  &  Christmas 
Day  —  I  dined  at  home  with  .  .  ."  Again 
no  entry  in  1769,  while  on  Christmas  Day,  1770, 
nothing  is  said  about  either  church  or  sermon, 
though  mention  is  made  of  several  people 
who  dined  with  Mr.  Rowe  at  home  and  "  staid 
&  spent  the  afternoon  &  evening  &  wee  were 
very  Cheerfull." 

"Dec.  25,  1771.  Christmas  Day.  excessive 
cold  weather,  the  ink  freezing  —  I  went  to 
Church  this  forenoon.  We  gathered  £318.6/ 
old  tenor  which  was  more  than  I  expected  being 
very  Cold  &  few  People  at  Church. 

"  Dec.  25,  1772.  Christmas  Day.  Mr.  Wal- 
ter Read  Prayers  &  preached  a  sensible  meta- 
physical sermon  for  Christmas  from  3rd  Chap. 
Timothy  16th  Verse  We  collected  abt  four 
hundred  pounds  Old  Tcndr  for  the  Poor. 

"  Dec.  25,  1773.  Christmas  Day.  I  went  to 
Church  this  morning.  Mr.  Walter  read  prayers  & 
preached  a  most  excellent  sermon.    We  collected 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  503 

in  old  tenor  400-8/  for  the  Benefit  of  the 
Poor." 

In  1774  no  entry  of  any  kind  for  Christmas 
Day;  in  1775  mention  of  a  "very  Good  Ser- 
mon "  preached  by  Mr.  Parker  while  Mr.  Wal- 
ter read  prayers.  The  diary  covering  Decem- 
ber is  missing  for  1776  and  1777,  —  and  the 
rather  depressed  entry  for  Christmas,  1779,  is 
that  "  the  congregation  is  thin  and  the  day  the 
coldest  that  had  been  known  for  forty  years." 
Mr.  Rowe  was  a  Loyalist,  and  things  had  not 
been  coming  his  way  of  late. 

A  hospitable  attitude  towards  Christmas  was 
to  be  noted  here  and  there,  even  among  the 
party  of  Dissent,  before  the  strain  of  the  Revo- 
lution set  in.  In  the  journal  of  Reverend 
Manasseh  Cutler,  for  instance,  I  find: 

"  Dec.  24,  1765  Tuesday,  Set  out  for  Boston 
in  the  carriage  with  Miss  Polly  Balch;  very 
cold.  Spent  the  evening  at  Capt.  Hart's. 
Lodged  at  Mr.  Williams'  It  being  Christmas 
eve  the  bells  in  Christ  Church  were  rung,  chimes 
played  tunes  etc.  Christ  Church  is  a  large 
brick  building,  situated  at  the  north  end,  and 
is  the  first  church  founded  in  the  town. 

"  Dec.  25,  Wed.  Christmas.  Went  to  church 
at  King's  Chapel,  where  was  a  very  gay  and 
brilliant  assembly.  Several  intervals,  in  read- 
ing service,  made  for  singing  anthems,  which 
were  performed  extremely  well.    Service  was 


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SOCIAL    LIFE    IN 

read  by  Parson  Caner,  and  a  sermon  preached 
.  .  .  Then  the  sacrament  was  administered 
(which  I  did  not  tarry  to  see).  Dined  at  Mr. 
Williams*.  A  very  handsome  dinner.  In  the 
afternoon  service  was  read,  and  anthems  sung, 
but  no  sermon.  This  church  is  built  of  stone, 
is  very  beautifully  adorned  with  carved  pillars, 
several  images,  etc.  Here  is  a  very  good  set 
of  organs  but  no  bells,  as  the  steeple  is  not 
erected.  This  is  the  most  grand  church  in 
town,  where  His  Excellency  is  obliged  to  at- 
tend. This  evening  wc  came  to  Roxbury  and ' 
spent  it  very  agreeably  at  Mr.  Increase  Sum- 
ner's, and  lodged  at  Mr.  Samuel  Sumner's. 

"  Dec.  26,  Thurs.  This  morning  began  to 
snow.  At  10  o'clock  we  set  out  for  the  city 
of  Tiot  (Indian  name  of  Dedham),  and  came 
to  an  anchor  at  Dr.  Ames'  where  we  dined, 
drank  tea,  and  spent  a  very  agreeable  txriiing. 
We  came  home  at  10  o'clock.  As  it  had  cleared 
up,  and  was  a  bright  moonlight  night,  and  not 
cold,  we  had  a  very  pleasant  ride.  So  much 
for  Christmas." 

In  1773  we  find  Doctor  Cutler  recording  "  a 
warm  pleasant  Christmas  ",  which  he  spent 
attending  services  in  near-by  Salem,  and  on  the 
following  day,  Sunday,  he  himself  "  preached 
a  Christinas  sermon!  "  But  after  this  no  more 
mention  of  Christmas  in  the  diary  until  the 
Revolution  had  become  an  old  story. 


OLD    NEW    ENGLAND  505 

That  clever  child,  Anna  Green  Winslow,  gibes 
at  Christmas  in  her  diary,  in  the  year  1771. 
On  December  24,  we  find  her  writing,  "  To- 
morrow will  be  a  holiday,  so  the  pope  and  his 
associates  have  ordained."  Anna,  not  being 
a  church  child,  naturally  had  no  gifts  on  Christ- 
mas Day.  Not  until  the  nineteenth  century 
had  run  half  its  course,  indeed,  was  Christmas 
celebrated  in  New  England  by  general  merri- 
ment and  the  universal  exchange  of  gifts.  We 
find  Wendell  Phillips,  referring  gently,  as  late 
as  1841,  to  "  that  wicked  Papistrie,  Christmas  "; 
he,  like  the  Presbyterian  child  in  "  Poganuc 
People",  had  been  denied  in  his  boyhood  the 
sweet  joys  of  this  great  festival.  So,  of  course, 
had  Mrs.  Stowe;  for  which  reason  she  writes 
with  especial  sympathy  of  Dolly,  "  who  did  not 
know  what  Christmas  was,  did  not  know  what 
the  chancel  was  and  had  never  seen  anything 
'  dressed  with  pine ',"  Dolly,  who  slipped  out 
of  her  warm  bed  on  Christmas  Eve  and,  all  by 
herself,  attended  a  "  'Piscopal  "  service,  —  thus 
precipitating  upon  the  community  of  which  she 
was  a  part  two  powerful  -controversial  sermons 
concerning  the  keeping  of  Christmas. 

To-day,  happily,  everybody  keeps  Christmas. 
Episcopalians  and  Unitarians,  Catholics  and 
Jews,  apparently  enjoy  alike  the  holly-wreaths 
and  mistletoe  boughs,  the  gathering  of  kindred, 
good  cheer,  merriment,  and  children's  games 


zeacy  Google 


SOCIAL    LIFE 


for  which  the  day  certainly  stands  on  the  sur- 
face, however  much  of  deeper  meaning  it  aiso 
contains  for  those  who  then  celebrate  the 
Birthday  of  Christ. 


. 


y\ 


„=  .Google 


AbhiGmuB.  250\  3Hft. 

Adams.  Abigail.  £97. 35ft 

Adam.  Brooks.  13ft. 

Adam*.    CJuarie*    Franca,    199- 

286,  473. 
Adams.  John.  113.  135.  13ft.  137. 

261.  264.  265.  326.  40S,  4OT. 

486. 
Adams.  John  Qamrr.  2SS.  325. 

336.447. 
Adams.  Mrs.  Perm.  296,  297. 
Adama.  Samuel,  105.  33a 
Adams.  Rev.  W3tauB.  29a  291. 
Adams.  Rev.  ZabdieL  162. 


Allen,  Ethan,  194,  195. 
Alien.  Job?-  282. 
Allro.  Rev.  WQTkm.  106,  106. 
AJIstoo.  Washington.  332. 
Almanacs,    370-372,    385,    424, 

426. 
Atom,  Joseph,  336. 
Ames,  Dr.  Nathaniel.  371. 
Amherst  College.  101. 
Amorv,  Mrs.  M.  B.,  323. 
Amor;-.  R.  G..  342- 
Amorv,  Thomas,  230. 
Amusement*,  417-152. 
Andover.  Mass.,  ITS,  364,  462. 
Andre.  Mai.  John,  329. 
Andrews,  John,  231. 
Andres,  Sir  Edmund,   171,  173, 

Appleton,  Rev.  Jesse.  106,  106. 
Applet  on,  Samuel,  32. 
April  Fool's  Dav.  492. 
Apthorp,  Nathaniel,  230. 
Ap thorp,  Thomas,  230. 
Attleboro,  Mass.,  179,  406,  469. 


AverS.  Asa.  23ft 

Bacon.  Rrr.  Join.  306;  477. 
Baker.  Hofeter.  t»  121,  123, 

123.  124. 
Ball,  Dr.,  125.  136. 
Bancroft.  George.  64- 
Barfew.  Jori.  SO.  SI.  425,  436- 
Barnard,  Rev  Job*.  3*7. 
"Baj    PBftfaft-BM*."    153-157. 


Beers.  Henrr  A,  S3. 

Bed.  Thomas,  A. 

Befhngham.  Gov.  Raranid.  311. 

212. 
BcnDingtoB,  Vl..  194.  466. 
Berkelev.   Bamop,   77.  93.    191. 

319.353. 
Berkelev.  Maaa..  191. 
BrtlK.  rMer.  420.  431.  433. 
BeverlT.  Mass..  105.  367. 
Bile-readin*.  351. 
BtDmn,  William.  159. 
Blackburn.    Jonathan    B-.   373. 

321. 
Blacksmiths,  141.  143 
Blaekstooe.  William.  339. 
"  Boiled  dinner."  260. 
Bolton,  C.  K..  305. 
Bolton,    Mrs.   C.   K..   vi,   336, 

337   310 
Books,   59,'  77,   13$.   153,  335, 

350-377. 
Booksellers,  14a 
Boston,    Mass..    396-399,    405. 

406,  407.  408.  455,  503,  504. 
Bowsloin.  Gov.  James,  104,  106, 


zeacy  Google 


INDEX 


Bowdoin   College,    46,    104-109, 

321. 
Bo  wen,  Daniel,  342. 
Bo  wen,  Deacon  Ephraim,  266. 
Bowne.  Eliza  Bootbgnle,  272. 
Bo  vision,   Mrs.  Thomas,  322. 
Uovlsi.ui.  Dr.  Z;il"!l.-1,  ll.i,   I '.".». 
Boylston,  Mass.,  120. 
Bradford,    Gov.    William,    474, 

494,  495. 
Bradslreet,  Anne,  356,  363-365. 
Braii.-I  reel ,  Simon,  363,  459. 
Braintree,  Mass.,  135,  199. 
Branch,  Anna  Hemjwtciirl,  239. 
Braille,  Thomas,  149. 
Breck.  Rev.  Robert,  120.  294. 
Bre.rk.  Samuel,  1*77,  306. 
Bridge,  Horatio,  10S. 
Brigham,  Elijah,  418. 
Bngham.  Dr.  Samuel,  120. 
Brook  field,  Mass.,  120,  395. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  7. 
Brown,  Chadd,  86. 
Brown,  John,  87,  404,  438,  444. 
Brown,  Nicholas,  86,    150,    151, 

444. 
Brown,  William  Henry,  345. 
Brown    University,    46,    82-92, 

128,  229.  267. 
Browne,  Rev.  Arthur,  213,  287, 

353,  354. 
Brunswick,  Maine,  105. 
Bryant,    William    Cullen,    356, 

377. 
Buckingham,  Joseph  T.,  366. 
Burl,  David,  131. 
Bundling,  196-201. 
Bunker  Hill,  190,329. 
Burnet,  Gov.  William,  245. 
Buxton,  Dr.  Samuel,  456. 
Bytes,  Dr.  Mather,  158. 

Campbell,  Jacob.  229. 
Caner,  Rev.  Henry,  504. 
Carver,  Mass.,  251. 
Cmttanach.  Miss  H.  C  342. 
Charlestown,  Mass.,  7. 
Chase.  Salmon  P.,  97. 
I'liiiinncv,  Charles.  54,  115. 
Cbccklcv,  Rev.  John.  353- 356. 
Checkly,  Samuel,  164,  165,  166. 


Cheever,  Eaekiel,  6,  7. 
Cheverus.  Bishop,  342. 
Choate,  Rufus,  97. 
Christening  customs,  180,  181. 
Christinas,  484,  494-506. 
Churches.  145-195. 
Clarke.  .loha,  128. 
Clarke,  Richard.  323. 
Cleaveland,  Parker,  107. 
Codfish,  261. 
Coffin,  Joshua,  489. 
Colchester,  Conn.,  479. 
Concord,  Mass.,  20. 
Concord,  N.H.,412,454. 
Conway,  Mass.,  334. 
Cook,  Tom.  297,  298. 
Cooper,  Jedidiah,  162. 
Cooper,  Rebecca,  216. 
CoriW,  John  Singleton,  213, 272, 

310,  321-326. 
Corwin,  Jonathan,  273,  274,  275. 
Cotton,  Rev.  John,  5,  436. 


Craigie,  Andrew,  406. 
Crevecoeur,    Hector   Saint-Oean 

de.  352. 
Crowninshield,  Edward  A.,  373, 


Cutler,  Rev.  Timothy,  77,  I 

Dnguerre,  Louis  Jacques  Mand#. 

346,  347. 
Daguerreotvpes,  336,  346-349. 
Dancing,    402,    403.    417,   436- 

442, 
Daukers,  Jasper,  56. 
Darling.  E.,  228. 
Dartmouth,  Earl  of,  93. 
Dartmouth  College,   46,  92-97, 

105,  130. 
Davenport,  John,  286. 
Davis,  Mrs.  D.  T.,  348. 
Davis,  Horace,  123. 
Day,  Jeremiah,  81. 
Daye,  Stephen,  371. 
Dr-»ne,  Rev.  Samuel,  428,  4 
Dedham,  Mass.,  9,   10,  II,   12, 


zeaEy  Google 


INDEX 


500 


146,  199,  290,  371,  379,  399, 

406,  604. 
Deerfield,  Mass.,  44,  143,  192. 
Delemater,  Dr.  John,  106. 
Derby,  Mrs.  Richard,  333. 
Dewey,  Rev.  Jedidiah,  194,  466. 
Diaries,  288-318. 
Dickinson,  Rebecca,  301,  302, 

303. 
Dighton,  Mass.,  178. 
Doolittle,  Joel,  110. 
Dorchester,  Mass.,  8,  338. 
Douglass,  David,  444. 
Douglass,     Dr.     William,     117, 

Downit 
Doyle. 

Drinking,  264. 
■    Dudley,  Gov.  Joseph,  58. 
Dudley,  Paul,  63,  294. 
Dimeter,   Rev.   Henry,  60,  61, 

52,  162. 
Dunton,  John,  209. 
Durfee,  Rev.  Calvin,  103. 
Duxbury,  Mass.,  468. 
Dwight,  Timothy,  7ft,  80,  81, 

95,  109,  110,413,415. 

Earie,  Alice  Morse,  vi,  170,  208, 

279,  303,  360. 
Earie,  Dr.  John,  447. 
East  Greenwich,  R.  I.,  228. 
Eaton,  Rev.  Isaac,  83. 
Eaton,  Rev.  Nathaniel.  49,  60. 
Eaton,   Gov.   Theophilus,   242, 

286. 
Edouart,    August*,    343,    344, 

346. 
Edwards,    Jonathan,    28,    181, 

200,  372,  373. 
Edwards,  Rev.  Morgan,  87. 
Edwards,  Rev.  Timothy,  183. 
Eliot,  Rev.  Andrew,  80,  463. 
Eliot,  John,  6,  12,  13,  152,  271. 
Eliot,  Dr.  John,  114. 
Eliot,  John  Fleet,  373,  374. 
Eliot,  Samuel  A.,  64. 
Ebon,  Dr.  Louis,  168. 
Emerson,  George  B.,  64. 
Emerson,    Mary    Moody,    311, 

352,363. 


Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  312. 
Endicott,  Gov.  John,  216,  216. 
Enfield,  Conn.,  393. 
Erring,  John,  230. 
Evans,  Elisabeth,  276. 
Evelyn,  John,  215. 
Everett,  Edward,  64. 
Exeter,  N.  H.,  410. 

Faneuil  Hall,  408. 

Fast  Day,  480-484. 

Feake,  Henry,  320. 

Feke,  Robert,  320. 

Fiske,  Rev.  Moses,  180. 

Fitch.  Rev.  Ebenezer,  99,  100. 

Fitchburg,  Mass.,  161,  162. 

Fleet,  Thomas,  373,  374,  375. 

Flyut,  Rev.  Josiah,  387-392. 

Forbes,  Elisha,  295.  ■ 

Forbes,   Mrs.  Harrietts  M.,  vi, 

125,  292. 
Forks,  25ft. 

Frankland,  Sir  Harry,  206,  286. 
Franklin,   Benjamin,    140,   141, 

371. 
Franklin,  James,  371. 
Freeman,  Rev.  James,  301. 
Fuller,  Samuel,  456. 
FulBom,    Glorianna,    206,    207, 


Funerals,  463-471. 

Gale,  Dr.  Benjamin,  129. 
Garfield,  James  A.,  101. 
Gay,  Rev.  Bunker,  467. 
George  III,  340. 
Gilmor,  Robert,  402-411. 
Goelet,  Cant.  Francis,  450,  451. 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang,  340. 
Goodrich,  Samuel  G.,  36. 
Goodwin,  Mra.  Ichabod,  442. 
Goodwin,  John,  360. 
Gookin,  Parson,  388,  380,  300. 
Gott,  Dr.  Benjamin,  lift,  120, 

121,  122,  123,  124,  125,  293. 
Gourand,  Francois,  347,  348. 
Gray,  Francis  Colby,  348. 
Gregory,  William,  394-402. 
Greeley,  Horace,  423. 
Greenleaf,  Stephen,  230. 


zeacy  Google 


510                          INDEX 

Gridley,    Jeremiah,     136,    460, 

Holden,  Oliver,   159.  160,  337, 

461. 

33S. 

Griawold,   Gov.   Matthew,   204, 

Hollis,  N.  H.,  227. 

205. 

Holmes,    Oliver    Wendell,    237, 

Groton,  Mass.,  179,  199. 

449. 

Grout,  Joseph,  296. 

Holyoke,  Edward,  00. 

Honyman,  Rev.  James,  190,  191. 

Hadley,  Mass.,  132. 
Hale,  Benjamin.  392. 
Hale,  Lord  Chief  Justice,  213. 

Hooper,  "  King,"  283. 

Hooper,  Pollv,  230. 
Hope,  Sir  John,  331. 

Hale,  Robert,  351. 

Hopkins.  Mark,  100,  101. 

Hallowell,  Robert,  230. 

Hopkins,     Rev.     Samuel.     181, 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  330. 

182. 

Hampton,  N.  H,,  19. 
Hampton  Falls,  N.  H„  389. 

Hopkinton,    N.    H.,    202.    227, 

423. 

Hancock,  Dorothy  Quincy,  325. 

Howe,  Adam,  417- 

Hancock,  John,  101,  325,  330. 

Howe,  Jeruslia.  417. 

Harding,  Chester,  333,  334. 
Harris,  Benjamin,  23,  24,  26. 
Harris,  William,  356. 

Howe,  Lyman,  413. 

Howe,  Col.  Thomas,  138. 

Howe,  Sir  William,  131. 

Harrison,  Peter,  189. 

Hughes,  Robert  Ball.  338. 

Hart,  Benjamin,  392. 

Humphreys,  David.  80. 

Hartford,  Conn.,  5,    129,    183, 

Hunter,  William,  128. 

279,  393,  410,  411,  454. 

Huntington,  Arria  S3.,  210. 

Harvard,  Rev.  John,  47,  48,  49. 

Huntington,  Gov.,  483. 

Harvard,  Rev.  Thomas,  367. 

Huntington,  Solomon,  420,  421. 

Harvard  College,  30,  45,  47-73, 

Huntington.  Conn.,  179. 

152,  154,  350,  387. 

Huskings,  424-428. 

Hatch,  Mrs.  M.  R.  P„  94. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  19,  172,  254, 

Hatfield,  Mass.,  303. 

435. 

Hathaway,  Dr.  Rufus,  468. 

Hutchinson,  Gov.  Thomas,  360, 

Haverhill,  Mass.,  146,  410. 

477,  487. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  107,  108, 

186.  272,  435. 

Innkeepers,    137-139,    379-381, 

Hazard,  Caroline,  257. 

413-416. 

Hazard,  Robert,  256. 

Ipswich,  Mass.,  7,  22,  119,  137, 

Hazard,  Thomas  B.,  142. 

267,  280,  289.  290.  391. 

II. ./In i ,  John,  335. 

Irving,    Washington,    38,    356 
377.500, 

Healy,  G.  P.  A.,  336. 

Hearaey,  Jonathan,  65,  66,  67, 

68. 

Jack,  John,  469, 

Hempstead,    Joshua,    298,    299, 

Jackson,  E.  Nevill,  340. 

300. 

James,    Admiral    Bartholomew, 

Higginson,  Thomas  Wentworth, 

424. 

197. 

Jennings,  Rev.  Isaac.  194. 
J,-well.  K.'v.  .h-.tK.liuh,  207. 

Hilton,  Martha,  213. 

Hingham,  Mass.,  21,  146,  335. 

Jenett.  Rev.  Jedidiah,  388. 

Hinsdale.  N.  H„  467. 

Jews,  188,  189,  190. 

Hint,  Mary,  232. 

"  Johnny-cake,"  262. 

Hoar,  President,  54,  115. 

Johnson,  Clifton,  vi,  44. 

Hodges,  Almon  D.,  440. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel.  329. 

!«„  Google 


INDEX 


Major  ) 


1SL 

Kmingswarlh,  Conn..  129.  402. 
Kimball.  Genrade  Sehryn,  356. 
King.  William.  343. 
King's     Chapel.     Samoa,     150, 

30L.  367.  503.  504- 
King's     Church,      Providence, 

R-  I.  15a  287.  353.  354. 
KilUud,  resident,  09. 
Kittredge.  George  Lrmts,  429. 
Kneeiand,    Mre.    AnaUa  Eusus, 

21a 

141. 


Lafayette.  Gen  aV.  441. 
Laocuut.  Uul,  277. 
I*nf,,  Andre*.  375. 
LavTcooe.  An**.  100. 
Lawton,  Frank  J-,  337. 
Lawyer*,  135-137. 
Lebanon,  Conn..  36. 
Lechford,    ~ 
276. 


Lester,  John,  99. 

Liubfidd,  Conn.,  131. 

Lloyd,  Dr.  James,  131,  132,  304. 

305. 
Longfellow,    Henrv  Wadsnorth, 

107,  213,  338,  344,  413. 
Longnwadow,  Maaa.,  192,  193. 
Lord,  Nathan,  105. 
Love,  William  De  Low,  476, 478. 
Lovdl,  James,  325. 
Lowell,  Jama  Ituasdl,  366. 
Lucas,  John,  391. 
Luther,  Martin,  495. 
Lyme,  Conn.,  402. 
Lynn,  Maaa.,  233,  251.  320,  383, 


Lyon, 


154. 


511 

CapC   Archibald, 

Mime     Medic*]     School,     106, 

107. 
MaJbone.  Edward  C,  332,  333, 


Mann,  Jonathan,  46S. 
Manning.  James,  83,  84,  SO,  87. 
MarMehead,     Mass.,    60,    367, 

451. 
Marfcorough.    Mass.,    120,    125, 

138,  293,  395.  415. 
MatahalL  Emilv.  335. 
Masaaaoh.  474.' 
Mather,    Cotton,    28,    45,    53, 

115,  117.   145.  150,   153,   179. 

188,  202,  208.  271,  319.  356- 

363,  356,  375.  427.  437.  43S, 

455.  481.  485.  495.  498. 
Mather.   Rev.   Increase,  53.  56, 

57.  58,  136,  437.  43S. 
Mather,  Richard.  152. 
Mather,  Dr.  Samuel,  378, 
Maude.  Daniel.  3. 
Maxwdl,  Rev.  Samuel,  7. 
Mav.  Samuel  J.,  64. 
Medfurd.  Maaa..  146. 
Melliah,  John.  412. 
Merrill,  John.  355. 
Middkburv    College,    46,    109, 

110,  111. 
Middletown,  Conn.,  18. 
Mildmav.  Sir  Henry,  154. 
Mfflbury.  Maaa.,  433. 
Milk,  Rev.  Jedidiah,  179. 
Minard,  Peter  S.,  44a 
Miniatures.  332.  333,  336. 
Moffat,  Thomas,  128. 
Moody,  Eleaxar,  263,  264. 
Morrison,  Dr.  Norman.  129. 
Mow,  Rev.  Jedediah,  3a  31. 
Morse,  Richard  C,  347. 
Morse,  Samuel  P.  B.,  333.  346. 

347. 


Mourning  rings,  456,  457. 
Music,  149-lSa  418,  446,  447, 


zeaoy  G00gk 


Nantucket,    Mass.,    231,    429- 

Pawt.uc-ket,  R.  I.,  399,  405. 
Peabodv,  Andrew  P.,  69.  70,  71, 

430,  4a  1. 

Narragaaselt  Pier,  258. 

72. 

Nason.  licv.  I'.lins.  ISA, 

Penee  Dale,  R.  L,  142. 

New  Hertford,  Mush.,  233. 

Peale,  James,  332. 

N.'wIhtv,  Jol.ii,  374,  375. 

Pease,  Ca.pt.  Levi,  393. 

Newbury,  Mass.,  178,  238,  207, 

Pelham,  Penelope,  211. 

460,  489. 

Pelham,  Peter,  319,  321,  323. 

Newburyporl,    332,    401 ,    448, 

Pemberton,  Rev.  Ebeneaer,  477. 

453. 

I'l-iiii.  Juliana.  231. 

"  New  England    Primer,"   28- 

Pepperell,  William,  232. 

30. 

IVr.v,  liar],  132. 

Newfane.  Vt.,  220. 

Perrault,  Charles,  375. 

New  Haven,  Conn.,  5,  7,  15,  74, 

Peters,    Rev.    Samuel,    73,    186, 

75,280,394,402,  411. 

262,  500. 

New  London,  Conn.,  271,  298, 

Phelps,  Hon.  Charles,  209,  210, 

299,  401,  402. 

211. 

Newport,  R.  I.,  5.  85,  127,  129, 

I'liihi.i.-Ipliia,  123. 

188.   189,   190,   191,  320,  400, 

Phillip*.  U.v.  Smiiuel,  462. 

403,  404.  491 

Phillip*,  Wendell,  ;">U,  484.  505. 

Niepee,  Joseph  Nin'-phore.  346, 

Physicians,  114-135. 

347. 

Pier,  Arthur  Stan  wood,  61. 

Noble,  John.  392. 

Pierre,  Prank  liu.   107.  108. 

Northampton,  Mass.,  16,  132. 

Pierpont,  Rev.  John,  113,  345. 

Northborough,  Mass.t  125. 

PfttaOdd,  Mas*.,  102. 

Norwich,  Conn..  270.  344. 

I'lviuiiiilli,   Mass.,  20,   145,   177. 

Nourae,  Rebecca,  273. 

251.291,  456,481,500. 

Porter,  David,  464. 

Oakes,  President,  54. 

Portland,  Maine,  104,  107,  392, 

Occom.  Samson,  93. 

428.  488. 

Old  Baptist.  Church,  Providence, 

Portsmouth,   N.   H.,   238,  343, 

R.  I.,  88,  89. 

354,  387,  392,  409,  410,  441, 

••  Old   Shfe."    Hiugham,    Mass  , 

442,  443.  488. 

146. 

Pi.tt.-r.  Col.  Ni.l.i.lss.  236. 

Old  Snulli   M.^-tint?  House.   146, 

Prime,  W.  C,  220. 

175.  176,  239,  455.  459,  477. 

Printers.   139.   140. 

Olnev,  Richard,  385. 

Providence,   R.  I.,  85,  87.   150. 

Ordination  balls,  183,  438. 

151,  235.  236,  266,  287,  353, 

Otis,  Mrs.  Harrison  Gray,  336. 

355,  356,  384-386,   399,   400, 

Otis,  James,  136,464. 

404,  405,  439,  440,  443-445. 

Oxford,  Mass.,  419-422. 

"  Pudding  time."  261. 

Pumpkins,   258.   261,   262,   382, 

Paine,  Seth,  392. 

472,  473,  479. 

Palfrey,  John  O.,  113. 

Punishments,  186,  187. 

Palmer,  Mass.,  395. 

Pyburg,  Mrs.,  341. 

Parker.  Eliza  W-,  228. 

Parker,  Rev.  Samuel,  407,  503. 

Quiliinif-jmrt-ies,  432,  433. 
Quincey,  Edmund,  451. 

Parlunan,  Anna  Sophia,  418. 

Park  man.   Rev.   Ebenexer,  292- 

Quincy,  Josiah,  393. 

298. 

Quiucy,  Mrs.  Marv  Miller.  339. 

Parmont,  Philemon,  3,  6. 

Quincy,  Maas.,  286. 

INDEX 


Reynolds,  £ 
Ridgefield,  C 


lUflcw,  Robert,  188. 
Randolph,  Man.,  468. 

Rantoul,  Robert  8.,  392. 
Ratcliffe,  Rev.  Robert,  4S9. 
Rauschner,  John  Christian,  337. 
Raweon,  Edward,  213. 
Rawson,  Sir  Edward,  213. 
Rawson,  Rebecca,  213,  214. 
Revere,  Paul,  133. 

" '  i,  Sir  Joshua,  330. 
d,  Conn.,  36. 
Riding  mares,  257,  383. 
Riedeael,  Baron,  264. 
Robinson,  John,  329. 
Rochefoucault,     Duke     de    la, 

415. 
Rogers,  Rev.  Nathaniel,  391. 
Rogers,  William,  84. 
Howe,  John,  230,  449,  450,  460, 

461,  501,  502,  503. 
Rowley,  Mass.,  267,  387. 
Roxbury,  Mass.,  6. 
Royal],  Mrs.  Anne,  386,  387. 
Rumsey,  Thomas,  214. 
Ruskiu,  John,  340. 
Russell,  Eliia,  229. 
Russell,  Gov.  William,  483. 
Rust,  Henry,  137 

Sailors,  142,  143. 

Salem,  Mass.,  15,  273,  408,  409, 

456,  457,  459,  489,  504. 
Salisbury,  Stephen,  64-69,  312- 

"  Salt^Box  House,"  32,  34,  243, 

289,  378,  501. 
Salter,  Thomas,  466. 
Saltonstall,  Gov.,  76. 
Sanborn,  Kate,  462. 
Sargent,    Lucius   Manlius,   453, 

454. 
Sargent,  Peter,  208,  209. 
Saybrook,    Conn.,    72,   73,   74, 

402. 
Scarborough,  Maine,  272. 
Schools,  1-45. 
Scituate.  Mass.,  52. 
Scotland,  Conn.,  168. 
Seabury.  Bishop,  482,  483. 
Sedgwick,  Theodore,  99. 
Servants,  276-283. 


Bewail,  David,  387,  388,  389, 
391. 

Bewail,  Judith,  243. 

Sewall,  Judge  Samuel,  7,  51,  55. 
56,  57,  58.  13b.  166,  UB,  167. 
168,  171,  174.  178.  180,  208, 
209,  226,  232,  243,  249,  ail, 
286,  289.  290,  319,  356,  437, 
447,  453,  456,  458,  459,  460, 
476.  478.  486,  492,  496. 

Sewall,  Stephen,  391. 

Shakespeare.  350,  466. 

Sheep-shearings,  429-431. 

Shelburne,  N.  H-,  35. 

Sheldon,  George,  143. 

Shelton.  Jane  Dp  Forest,  vi,  32, 
243,  376,  601- 

Sherman,  Rev.  John,  179. 

Shirley,  Mass.,  337. 

Shoemakers,  142. 

Shrewsbury,  Mass.,  393,  478. 

Shrimpton,  Henry,  243. 


Silhouette,  Etienne  de,  339. 

Silhouettes,  339-346. 

Singing-Schools,  40,  418-422. 

Slicer,  Adeline  E.  H.,  164. 

Sluyter,  Peter,  66. 

Smibert,  John,  272,  319,  320. 

Smith,  Dr.  Nathan,  106. 

"  Southworth  and  Hawes,"  349. 

Sparks,  .Tared,  113. 

Spence,  John  Russell,  230. 

Spencer,  Gov.  John,  239. 

Spencer,  Mass.,  395. 

Springfield,  Mass.,  181,  193. 

SUndish,  Lora,  35. 

Stavers,  Benjamin,  392. 

Stavere,  John,  392. 

Stepney,  Francis,  488. 

Sterling,  Sir  John,  206,  207. 

Sterling,  Mass.,  369. 

Stiles,  Rev.  Ezra,  141, 151,  178, 

488. 
Stiles,  Dr.  H.  R.,  200. 
Stonington,  Conn.,  401 
Stratford,  Conn.,  206. 
Stratford-on-Avon,  48. 
Storer,  Mrs.  Ebeneser,  309,  310. 
Story,  Jeremiah,  423. 
Story,  Judge,  62. 


zeacy  Google 


514 

Stoughton,  Chief  Justice,  136. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  506. 
St.  Valentine'*  Day,  486,  486. 
Stuart,  Gilbert,  272,  326,  327, 

328,  32S,  334. 
Sudbury,  Mass.,  396,  413,  417. 
Sumner,  Clement,  134. 
Sumner,  Rev.  Joseph,  478. 
Sumner,  Mary  Osgood,  310. 
Sunderland,  Mass.,  44. 

i,  206,  286. 


INDEX 


Sumage,  Ames,  206 
Sweatland,  William, 


273. 


tnd,  V 
Sykes,  Reuben,  i 

Table-manners.  263,  264,  382. 
Talleyrand,  328. 
Taunton,  Mass.,  184,  186. 
Taverns,  161,  162. 
Taylor.  George,  287. 
Tea-dnnking,  251-256. 
Teatts,     Mrs.     Hannah,     269, 

270. 
Temperance  societies..  434. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  366. 
Thanksgiving,  451,  472-484. 
Theatres,    403,    406,    408,    442, 

443,  444.  445.  452,  464. 
Thomas.  Isaiah,  156,  159,  376. 
Thomas,    Robert    Bailev,     134, 

135.  140.  369,  370,  424. 
Thomas  (on,  Maine,  462. 
Thorndikc,   Mrs.  Mary  Quincy, 

339. 
Thornton,  John,  94. 
Ticknor,  George,  69. 
Tioli,  John  Baptist,  439,  440. 
Tisdale,  Nathan,  36. 
Tobacco,  184,  185. 
Touro,  Rev.  Isaac,  189. 
Touro.  Judah,  190. 
Trinity  Church,  Boston,  407. 
Trumbull,    John,    36,    80,    324, 

329-332,  333. 
Trumbull,    Governor   Jonathan, 

141. 
TwininR.  Thomas,  411. 
Tudor.  Dr.  Elihu.  129.  130. 
Tudor,   Deacon  John,  288,  300, 


Tyler,  Dr.  Moses  Colt,  358,  365, 

371. 
Tyler,  Royall,  197. 

Upton,  Jacob,  162. 

Vanderbilt,  Cornelius,  24. 
Vanhornrigh,  Hester,  92. 
Vane.  Sir  Harry,  60. 
Van  Rensselaer,  Mrs.  John  Kins. 

491. 
Vassalborough,  Maine,  424. 
Vergoose,  Elisabeth,  374. 
Vernon,  Vt„  467. 
Vyall,  John,  161. 

Wadsworth,  Benjamin,  59,  60. 

Walker,  Jaraea,  113. 

Wallis,  Dr.  Samuel,  119. 

Walpole,  Horace,  337. 

Walpole.  Mass.,  399. 

Walsh,  Robert,  346. 

Walter,  Rev.  William,  230,  501, 

502,  503. 
Wansey,  Henry,  135. 
Ward,  Hannah,  220. 
Wardell,  Jonathan,  391. 
Warren,  Mercy.  356. 
Warren,  R.  I.,  84. 
Washburn,    Emory,     101.     102, 

103. 
Washington.    George.    24,    326. 

327,  406,  441,  461.  462. 
Waters,  Henrv  F..  48. 
Waterston,  R.  C.  5. 
Watertown.  Mass.,  179.  396. 
Wax  portraits,  336-339. 
Webster,    Daniel.  96,  97,  335, 

336. 
Webster,  Noah,  33,  422. 
Wedding  rings,  202. 
Weeden,  William  B.,  143,  250. 
Weimar,  340. 
Weld,  Rev.  Abijah,  179. 
Wells,  Dr.  John  D,,  106. 
Wendell.  Jacob,  451- 
Wenham,  Mass..  119. 
Went.worth,  Gov.  Benning.  213. 
Wentn-orth,  Sir  John,  94.  95. 
West,  Benjamin,  327,  329,  330. 
Westborough,  Mass.,  292-298. 


.^Google 


INDEX 


Wenterir.  R. 


;W 


Weapon,  Unas-,  234. 

Wb»Ulev,  Pbilha.  279- 
Wheelock,  EfenaeT,  82,  93,  94, 

95.  96.  97. 
WheriodL.Jcfan.9S. 
Whed  ■  J  ifclit,  Rev.  John.  276. 
Whidden,  MiehaeL  441. 
Whipple,  Bex.  Jonah.  389. 
White,  Peregrine.  473. 
Whit*.  Susanna.  20S. 
White.  Rev.  Tbom**.  35tt 
Whitendd,    Rev.    George.    GO, 

251,  400,  401. 
Whitmore.  William  H.,  374. 
Whittier,  John  GtvenleaJ,    215, 

479. 


373. 

Wilkins,  Comfort,  209. 
Willard,  Capt.  Aaron.  278. 
Willard,  Samuel,  57,  58. 
Willard,  Sidney,  63. 
Williams,  Capt.,  415- 
Williams,  Eleaxar,  193. 
Williams,  Ephraim,  98. 
Williams,  Eunice,  192. 
Williams,    Roger,    82,    86,    128, 

185,  287. 
Williams,    Rev.    Stephen,    192, 

193. 


WtEEama  Cn&ege,  46.  «7-l«t. 
WflBon.  Rev.  Join,  271. 
Windsor,  Coon-,  139,  ISO.  301, 

231. 
Window.  Anna  Green,  1S3.  180, 

231.  303,  304.  305,  306,  307. 

30S,  309.  310.  486,  505. 
Window.  Edward.  20P. 
Winthrop,  Gov.  John,  4, 17,  216. 

217,  218,  339.  340.  341.  330. 

475- 
Winthrop,  Wait,  371, 456. 
Winthrop,  Maine,  18S. 
Witchcraft,  358-361. 
Wither,  George.  497. 
Woburn,  Mass.,  5,  30,  21,  32. 
Woloott,    Dr.    Alexander,    139. 

isa 

WcJcott,  Henrv,  129. 
Wolcott,  Gov.  Roger.  129.  204, 
Woleott.  Ursula,  204,  205, 
Woodbridge.  William,  18, 
Worcester,  Mass.,  120,  39S,  410. 
Worth,  Henrv  B.,  333. 
Wrantham,  Mass..  399, 
Wright,  Patience  Lovell,  337. 
Wynter,  John,  380. 

Yale,  Elihu,  75. 

Yale  Collage.  18,  46,  73-82,  134, 

330,  411. 
York,  Maine,  146,  320,  389. 


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